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	The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan
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Product Details Binding Audio CD Dewey Decimal Number 306.45 EAN 9781596590939 Format Audiobook, Unabridged ISBN 1596590939 Manufacturer Audio Evolution, distributed by Gildan/Hachette Number Of Items 8 Publication Date May 21, 2007 Publisher Audio Evolution, distributed by Gildan/Hachette Availability Usually ships in 24 hours Product Description In 1637, one Dutchman paid as much for a single tulip bulb as the going price of a town house in Amsterdam. Three and a half centuries later, Amsterdam is once again the mecca for people who care passionately about one particular plant — thought this time the obsessions revolves around the intoxicating effects of marijuana rather than the visual beauty of the tulip. How could flowers, of all things, become such objects of desire that they can drive men to financial ruin? In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan argues that the answer lies at the heart of the intimately reciprocal relationship between people and plants. In telling the stories of four familiar plant species that are deeply woven into the fabric of our lives, Pollan illustrates how they evolved to satisfy humankinds’s most basic yearnings — and by doing so made themselves indispensable. For, just as we’ve benefited from these plants, the plants, in the grand co-evolutionary scheme that Pollan evokes so brilliantly, have done well by us. The sweetness of apples, for example, induced the early Americans to spread the species, giving the tree a whole new continent in which to blossom. So who is really domesticating whom? Weaving fascinating anecdotes and accessible science into gorgeous prose, Pollan takes us on an absorbing journey that will change the way we think about our place in nature. Working in his garden one day, Michael Pollan hit pay dirt in the form of an idea: do plants, he wondered, use humans as much as we use them? While the question is not entirely original, the way Pollan examines this complex coevolution by looking at the natural world from the perspective of plants is unique. The result is a fascinating and engaging look at the true nature of domestication. In making his point, Pollan focuses on the relationship between humans and four specific plants: apples, tulips, marijuana, and potatoes. He uses the history of John Chapman (Johnny Appleseed) to illustrate how both the apple's sweetness and its role in the production of alcoholic cider made it appealing to settlers moving west, thus greatly expanding the plant's range. He also explains how human manipulation of the plant has weakened it, so that 'modern apples require more pesticide than any other food crop.' The tulipomania of 17th-century Holland is a backdrop for his examination of the role the tulip's beauty played in wildly influencing human behavior to both the benefit and detriment of the plant (the markings that made the tulip so attractive to the Dutch were actually caused by a virus). His excellent discussion of the potato combines a history of the plant with a prime example of how biotechnology is changing our relationship to nature. As part of his research, Pollan visited the Monsanto company headquarters and planted some of their NewLeaf brand potatoes in his garden--seeds that had been genetically engineered to produce their own insecticide. Though they worked as advertised, he made some startling discoveries, primarily that the NewLeaf plants themselves are registered as a pesticide by the EPA and that federal law prohibits anyone from reaping more than one crop per seed packet. And in a interesting aside, he explains how a global desire for consistently perfect French fries contributes to both damaging monoculture and the genetic engineering necessary to support it. Pollan has read widely on the subject and elegantly combines literary, historical, philosophical, and scientific references with engaging anecdotes, giving readers much to ponder while weeding their gardens. --Shawn Carkonen Starred Review. On the sixth anniversary of its original publication, Pollan's scientific twist on the human/plant symbiosis makes its audio debut. Pollan preaches a unique sort of romantic environmentalism where humans and plants satisfy each other's desires for survival, enjoyment, satisfaction and escape. He uses the apple, tulip, Cannabis and potato to develop his ideas, offering the histories of each and how they developed reciprocal relationships with the humans with whom each interacted. Scott Brick exudes excitement and breathes life into the recording—the timbre of his voice offering just the right touch of humor and depth. Listeners will feel like Brick truly loves the book and loves reading it aloud. It's a great combination for listeners: interesting subject, great writing and wonderful reading. Definitely not to be missed. (Reviews, Apr. 9, 2001) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Plants are important to us for many reasons. Pollan, an editor and contributor to Harper's and the New York Times Magazine and author of Second Nature: A Gardener's Education, muses on our complex relationships with them, using the examples of the apple, the tulip, the marijuana plant, and the potato. He weaves disparate threads from personal, scientific, literary, historical, and philosophical sources into an intriguing and somehow coherent narrative. Thus, he portrays Johnny Appleseed as an important force in adapting apple trees to a foreign climate but also a Dionysian figure purveying alcohol to settlers; tulips as ideals of beauty that brought about disaster to a Turkish sultan and Dutch investors; marijuana as a much desired drug related to a natural brain chemical that helps us forget as well as a bonanza for scientific cultivators; and the potato, a crop once vilified as un-Christian, as the cause of the Irish famine and finally an example of the dangers of modern chemical-intense, genetically modified agriculture. These essays will appeal to those with a wide range of interests. Recommended for all types of libraries. [For more on the tulip, see Anna Pavord's The Tulip (LJ 3/1/99) and Mike Dash's Tuplipomania: The Story of the World's Most Coveted Flower & the Extraordinary Passions It Aroused (LJ 3/1/00). Ed.] Marit S. Taylor, Auraria Lib., Denve. - Marit S. Taylor, Auraria Lib., Denver Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. Apples, tulips, marijuana, and potatoes. This sounds, perhaps, like a Dutch shopping list, but it's really a quick index to the subjects of Pollan's new book. One day, while working in his garden, the author began to wonder how his role as a sower of seeds differed from that of the bumblebee that was pollinating a nearby apple tree; his musings inspired these tales of botanical transformation. Pollan explores the ways in which four common crops have enjoyed and suffered the very best and worst of human intentions: how apples spread westward with American settlers, how the stock of tulips has soared and crashed, how the potency of marijuana has been exalted even as the plants have been miniaturized, and how potatoes have been turned into a cog in the genetic-industrial complex. The result is a wry, informed pastoral. Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker Pollan has an epiphany in his garden: what if the plant species humankind has nurtured over the last 10,000 years benefit as much from us as we do from them? Do humans choose to plant potatoes, or do potatoes attract humans like a flower lures a bee? Ablaze with this transformational vision, Pollan intertwines history, anecdote, and revelation as he investigates the connection between four plants that have thrived under human care--apples, tulips, marijuana, and potatoes--and the four human desires they satisfy in return: sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control. In the process, he casts new light on the legend of Johnny Appleseed. Holland's mania for tulips serves as a catalyst for a galvanizing discussion of why we wouldn't exist if flowers hadn't evolved. His refreshingly open-minded consideration of marijuana leads to profound reflections on the workings of the brain and the role psychoactive plants have played in the evolution of religion and culture. And, finally, Pollan ponders the Pandora's box of genetic engineering when he plants a patch of NewLeaf, a beetle-killing potato patented by Monsanto. Pollan's dynamic, intelligent, and intrepid parsing of the wondrous dialogue between plants and humans is positively paradigm-altering. Donna Seaman Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved 'I find this book to be inspirational ? curiosity and gentleness of spirit forming genius.' ? Richard Ford 'Michael Pollan is a sensualist and a wonderful, funny storyteller. He is so engaging that his profound environmental messages are effortlessly communicated. He makes you fall in love with Nature.' ? Alice Waters ?This book is as crisp as an October apple, as juicy as an August tomato, as long-awaited as the first flower of spring,. Michael Pollan has conceived a new and powerful understanding of who we are, and how we stand in relation to everything else?and the stories he tells to prove the point make the world seem a richer place.? ? Bill McKibben, author of Long Distance and The End of Nature ?No one else writes about the human environment quite like Michael Pollan: we can be grateful indeed that one of our wittiest writers about nature is also one of our wisest. In The Botany of Desire, Pollan makes a persuasive case that the plants we might be tempted to see as having been most domesticated by humanity are in fact also those that have been most effective in domesticating us. It is a stunning insight, and no one will come away from this book without having their ideas of nature stretched and challenged.? ? William Cronon, editor of Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature 'A fascinating and disturbing account of man's strange relationship with plants and plant science. Michael Pollan inspires one to rethink basic attitudes. Beautifully written, it is as compelling as a detective thriller.' ? Penelope Hobhouse, author of On Gardening 'Like Tracy Kidder, Michael Pollan is a writer to immerse in. He's informed and amusing, with a natural sort of voice that spools on inventively beyond expectations into a controlled but productive and intriguing obsessiveness (whether on Johnny Appleseed or marijuana). A fine book.' ? Edward Hoagland, author of Compass Points 'Anyone who has ever made personal contact with an apple, spud, tulip, or marijuana bud should read this book and be astonished at the eternal tango of men and plants, choreographed with wit, daring, and humanity by this botanist of desire who knows equally the power of plants and of words.' ? Betty Fussell, author of My Kitchen Wars 'Not since Jonathan Weiner's The Beak of the Finch have I been held so spellbound by a book. Using only four plants, The Botany of Desire succeeds in illuminating the radiant force of evolution. Remarkable.' ? Daniel J. Hinkley, author of The Explorer's Garden 'It is a rare pleasure to read a book of ideas so graceful and witty that it makes you smile?at times even laugh out loud?with delight as it challenges you to rethink important issues.' ? Mark Kurlansky, author of The Basque History of the World -- Review 'I find this book to be inspirational — curiosity and gentleness of spirit forming genius.' — Richard Ford 'Michael Pollan is a sensualist and a wonderful, funny storyteller. He is so engaging that his profound environmental messages are effortlessly communicated. He makes you fall in love with Nature.' — Alice Waters “This book is as crisp as an October apple, as juicy as an August tomato, as long-awaited as the first flower of spring,. Michael Pollan has conceived a new and powerful understanding of who we are, and how we stand in relation to everything else—and the stories he tells to prove the point make the world seem a richer place.” — Bill McKibben, author of Long Distance and The End of Nature “No one else writes about the human environment quite like Michael Pollan: we can be grateful indeed that one of our wittiest writers about nature is also one of our wisest. In The Botany of Desire, Pollan makes a persuasive case that the plants we might be tempted to see as having been most domesticated by humanity are in fact also those that have been most effective in domesticating us. It is a stunning insight, and no one will come away from this book without having their ideas of nature stretched and challenged.” — William Cronon, editor of Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature 'A fascinating and disturbing account of man's strange relationship with plants and plant science. Michael Pollan inspires one to rethink basic attitudes. Beautifully written, it is as compelling as a detective thriller.' — Penelope Hobhouse, author of On Gardening 'Like Tracy Kidder, Michael Pollan is a writer to immerse in. He's informed and amusing, with a natural sort of voice that spools on inventively beyond expectations into a controlled but productive and intriguing obsessiveness (whether on Johnny Appleseed or marijuana). A fine book.' — Edward Hoagland, author of Compass Points 'Anyone who has ever made personal contact with an apple, spud, tulip, or marijuana bud should read this book and be astonished at the eternal tango of men and plants, choreographed with wit, daring, and humanity by this botanist of desire who knows equally the power of plants and of words.' — Betty Fussell, author of My Kitchen Wars 'Not since Jonathan Weiner's The Beak of the Finch have I been held so spellbound by a book. Using only four plants, The Botany of Desire succeeds in illuminating the radiant force of evolution. Remarkable.' — Daniel J. Hinkley, author of The Explorer's Garden 'It is a rare pleasure to read a book of ideas so graceful and witty that it makes you smile—at times even laugh out loud—with delight as it challenges you to rethink important issues.' — Mark Kurlansky, author of The Basque History of the World In 1637, one Dutchman paid as much for a single tulip bulb as the going price of a town house in Amsterdam. Three and a half centuries later, Amsterdam is once again the mecca for people who care passionately about one particular plant — thought this time the obsessions revolves around the intoxicating effects of marijuana rather than the visual beauty of the tulip. How could flowers, of all things, become such objects of desire that they can drive men to financial ruin? In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan argues that the answer lies at the heart of the intimately reciprocal relationship between people and plants. In telling the stories of four familiar plant species that are deeply woven into the fabric of our lives, Pollan illustrates how they evolved to satisfy humankinds’s most basic yearnings — and by doing so made themselves indispensable. For, just as we’ve benefited from these plants, the plants, in the grand co-evolutionary scheme that Pollan evokes so brilliantly, have done well by us. The sweetness of apples, for example, induced the early Americans to spread the species, giving the tree a whole new continent in which to blossom. So who is really domesticating whom? Weaving fascinating anecdotes and accessible science into gorgeous prose, Pollan takes us on an absorbing journey that will change the way we think about our place in nature. In 1637, one Dutchman paid as much for a single tulip bulb as the going price of a town house in Amsterdam. Three and a half centuries later, Amsterdam is once again the mecca for people who care passionately about one particular plant ? thought this time the obsessions revolves around the intoxicating effects of marijuana rather than the visual beauty of the tulip. How could flowers, of all things, become such objects of desire that they can drive men to financial ruin? In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan argues that the answer lies at the heart of the intimately reciprocal relationship between people and plants. In telling the stories of four familiar plant species that are deeply woven into the fabric of our lives, Pollan illustrates how they evolved to satisfy humankinds?s most basic yearnings ? and by doing so made themselves indispensable. For, just as we?ve benefited from these plants, the plants, in the grand co-evolutionary scheme that Pollan evokes so brilliantly, have done well by us. The sweetness of apples, for example, induced the early Americans to spread the species, giving the tree a whole new continent in which to blossom. So who is really domesticating whom? Weaving fascinating anecdotes and accessible science into gorgeous prose, Pollan takes us on an absorbing journey that will change the way we think about our place in nature. 'I find this book to be inspirational — curiosity and gentleness of spirit forming genius.' — Richard Ford 'Michael Pollan is a sensualist and a wonderful, funny storyteller. He is so engaging that his profound environmental messages are effortlessly communicated. He makes you fall in love with Nature.' — Alice Waters “This book is as crisp as an October apple, as juicy as an August tomato, as long-awaited as the first flower of spring,. Michael Pollan has conceived a new and powerful understanding of who we are, and how we stand in relation to everything else—and the stories he tells to prove the point make the world seem a richer place.” — Bill McKibben, author of Long Distance and The End of Nature “No one else writes about the human environment quite like Michael Pollan: we can be grateful indeed that one of our wittiest writers about nature is also one of our wisest. In The Botany of Desire, Pollan makes a persuasive case that the plants we might be tempted to see as having been most domesticated by humanity are in fact also those that have been most effective in domesticating us. It is a stunning insight, and no one will come away from this book without having their ideas of nature stretched and challenged.” — William Cronon, editor of Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature 'A fascinating and disturbing account of man's strange relationship with plants and plant science. Michael Pollan inspires one to rethink basic attitudes. Beautifully written, it is as compelling as a detective thriller.' — Penelope Hobhouse, author of On Gardening 'Like Tracy Kidder, Michael Pollan is a writer to immerse in. He's informed and amusing, with a natural sort of voice that spools on inventively beyond expectations into a controlled but productive and intriguing obsessiveness (whether on Johnny Appleseed or marijuana). A fine book.' — Edward Hoagland, author of Compass Points 'Anyone who has ever made personal contact with an apple, spud, tulip, or marijuana bud should read this book and be astonished at the eternal tango of men and plants, choreographed with wit, daring, and humanity by this botanist of desire who knows equally the power of plants and of words.' — Betty Fussell, author of My Kitchen Wars 'Not since Jonathan Weiner's The Beak of the Finch have I been held so spellbound by a book. Using only four plants, The Botany of Desire succeeds in illuminating the radiant force of evolution. Remarkable.' — Daniel J. Hinkley, author of The Explorer's Garden 'It is a rare pleasure to read a book of ideas so graceful and witty that it makes you smile—at times even laugh out loud—with delight as it challenges you to rethink important issues.' — Mark Kurlansky, author of The Basque History of the World Customers who bought this item also bought In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals Second Nature: A Gardener's Education A Place of My Own: The Education of an Amateur Builder Seeds of Change: Six Plants That Transformed Mankind Customer Reviews for: The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World Rating - Great Idea, Horrible Result Mr Pollan had a great idea for a book--evolution of 4 different species of well know plants from the plant's perspective as influenced by humans. There's about 30 pages of good information to this end. The rest is horribly long and painful unrelated tangents that he clearly enjoys writing about, but have absolutely nothing to do with the subject. For instance, in covering apples he talks for freggen ever about John Chapaman, aka Johnny Appleseed. Who cares about Appleseed's sexual frustrations with a potential 10 year old ... Read More Rating - Short, Sweet, Insightful I was continuously amused and enlightened about many things in this book; suffice it to say I dog-eared quite a few pages as I wanted to go back to re-read certain passages for the perspective, perhaps for the phrasing, or for the knowledge. Humans certainly have the desire and the ability to bend nature, but a good lesson learned in this book is to let nature be itself, even as you make it do your bidding! Rating - The best In style and substance this is one of the best books I've read in recent years, as well as one of the most enjoyable. It also broadened my perspective in several areas. I highly recommend. Rating - The Coevolution of Human Cultures and Domesticated Plants. In "The Botany of Desire", author and gardener Michael Pollan turns the tables on our view of domesticated species by presenting a would-be "plant's eye view of the world". His premise is that humans may have a more reciprocal relationship with domesticated plants than we like to believe. Perhaps the plants use us to propagate themselves as we use them to satisfy our desires. To explore this idea, Pollan recounts the horticultural histories and the human desires that created them for 4 domesticated plant species: the apple, ... Read More Rating - A fast read, well written, fascinating! The connections between plants and people are fascinating. Michael Pollan writes so well, I was pulled through the book. This is a view of the web of life that I haven't seen before. Highly recommended. Another book I enjoyed some time back (not by Pollan) is "Biomimicry". see more reviews See all books by author Michael Pollan

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