Details
Rent The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World
Author:
Narrator: Scott Brick
Format: Unabridged-CD
Publisher: Hachette Audio
Published: May 2007
Genre: Miscellaneous
Retail Price: $39.98
Discs: 8
Synopsis
Every schoolchild learns about the mutually beneficial dance of honeybees and flowers: The bee collects nectar and pollen to make honey and, in the process, spreads the flowers' genes far and wide. In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan ingeniously demonstrates how people and domesticated plants have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship. He masterfully links four fundamental human desires—sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control—with the plants that satisfy them: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. In telling the stories of four familiar species, Pollan illustrates how the plants have evolved to satisfy humankind's most basic yearnings. And just as we've benefited from these plants, we have also done well by them. So who is really domesticating whom?
Reviews
Examines a few of the most popular domesticated plants used by humans and how our fondness for them could be seen as an evolutionary strategy of the plant rather than human interference with natural selection. The apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato are the plants of interest. It includes wonderful, historical information about how and when we domesticated the plant to make it serve our desires, such as sweetness in the apple, color in the tulip, mental effect in the pot, and the McDonalds French fry in the potato. Genetic engineering is addressed, economics, Johnny Appleseed, and Ronald Reagans help in the spread and strength of the marijuana, and the Irish potato blight and famine are all looked, to enjoyable effect. This book is full of interesting information, history, as well as entertaining contemplations. Well worth a read.