The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World
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List Price: $16.00
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Manufacturer: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Written By: Michael Pollan
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.45
EAN: 9780375760396
Feature: ISBN13: 9780375760396
ISBN: 0375760393
Label: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Manufacturer: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: 2002-05-28
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Release Date: 2002-05-28
Studio: Random House Trade Paperbacks
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Features
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ISBN13: 9780375760396
Condition: NEW
Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Editorial Reviews for The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World
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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?
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Consumer reviews:
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Customer Rating:  
Summary: Amazing plans of plants
Comment: First of all, if you have never read any of Michael Pollan's books, you are missing out. I would suggest reading The Omnivore's Dilemma first, but this book is very good also. It is a look at how instead of us conquering and "domesticating" four kinds of plants, they have in fact figured out how to use us to propagate their species. The section on apples is my favorite because it seems like this plant completely reinvented itself just so we would enjoy it and spread it around.
I have only two problems with this book. First, the section on marijuana is a little scattered as Pollan begins to describe what the plant does to our mind, then descends into a rambling discussion on the importance of forgetting and the meaning of wonder. Not necessarily bad writing, but not really focused on plants, either.
My second problem is that while the first three sections do for the most part focus on the plants, the potato section is mostly an indictment of Monsanto, the seed company. While this is a company with plenty of demons to expose, the section could have been very interesting if it focused on the potato's evolution and transformations from noxious root to staple food. You get the feeling Pollan was just waiting to tee off on Monsanto and went off on a tangent.
All that being said, it is a very good book about a most interesting and unique topic. I have never thought about the "plant's-eye view," as Pollan says. He is a gifted writer who can make the strangest and most obscure topics exciting and interesting. Throughout his books you just stop after reading something and wonder at it. He tells of a plant that has evolved spots that appear to be a female bee's backside so that male bees plow into it, getting coated with pollen. Becoming frustrated, they do this multiple times to many different flowers and spread the pollen around. How amazing is that? A plant figuring out what the backside of an insect looks like. A year ago, I cared not one whit about plants, but now Pollan is one of my favorite writers.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A fascinating discussion of the relationship between plants & humans
Comment: Any fans of Henry Hobhouse's Seeds of Change: Six Plants That Transformed Mankind and Seeds of Wealth: Five Plants That Made Men Rich will enjoy this book. His conversational writing style and inclusion of interesting anecdotes reminded me of John Mc Phee's Oranges.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fantastic
Comment: Botany of Desire is a fantastic book. I don't feel that it is as strong as Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemna but it is a great read none the less and tackles the subject matter with top notch story telling. If you are at all curious, DIY minded or just inclined to cook and do a little gardening you'll be inspired to try some new things. Really an essential read for anyone who enjoyed Omnivore's Dilemna. I'd give it a full five stars if it had a little more actionable information and the fact that Pollan himself shows us just how interesting and inspiring a book like this can be with his follow up... Omnivore's Dilemna.
Successfully combines history, botany and agriculture for a look at culturally relevant topics we can all relate to our own lives.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Sensuous Read!
Comment: What a captivating book! Michael Pollan is exquisitely articulate! Botany of Desire is: factually engaging, biologically fascinating, historically and sociologically relevant yet spiritually profound. Michael has a way of telling the story weaving together multiple subject matter. It is deliciously sensual yet essentially pragmatic. Michael challenges our thinking, throwing the gauntlet down for us to fundamentally reorient the way we think about our place on this planet and as humans, our relationship to nature. He weaves the story of his subject matter (plants) by giving them a voice in the narrative and looks through a lens from their point of view. Michael takes very difficult subject matter and boils it down to its essence, making it easily accessible to the reader. He connects the dots for us. He extracts the "so what" that most of us overlook. He masterfully weaves together multiple perspectives, perspectives that are systemic with far reaching consequences and makes those consequences clearly visible. A wonderful gift, this book. Give it, read it. You will enjoy this sensuous, programmatic, articulate and inspiring read!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Plants and Manimals
Comment: The Botany of Desire is an investigation of the relationship between humans and plants. It covers the social, biological, moral and economic effects that plants have had on people throughout history - not to mention the effect we have had on plants. The author questions the conventional view that humans have complete rule over the plant kingdom. The author steps back and attempts to view the world from the plant's "point of view", using the cognitive tools possessed by us humans. Taking this view, he argues that the idea of a clear divide between civilized society and the natural world isn't really the whole picture. We of course utilize plants for our interests, but consider the amount of effort exhausted by farmers and gardeners around the world on behalf of plants.
The author also considers the effect humans have had on the natural process of evolution. When we domesticate plants, why do we choose certain plants over others? Some plants develop qualities that are desirable to people, and thanks to a process of "unnatural selection", those plants flourish in our civilized society. The examples used in the book are the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato - each of which satisfies a different human desire (sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control, respectively).
I've never been too interested in botany, but I really enjoyed this book. Actually, I think the author probes deeper into human nature than into the natural world itself.
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More Information on The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World
The Botany of Desire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World is a 2001 nonfiction book by journalist Michael Pollan. This work explores the nature of domesticated plants from the dual ...
Powell's Books - The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye ...
The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan
Online NewsHour: Botany of Desire -- June 29, 2001
Author Michael Pollan talks about his new book, "The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World."
YouTube - Cannabis Forgetting and the Botany of ...
Contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine and the author of The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World, Michael Pollan delivers this Avenali Lecture on the ...
The Botany of Desire
The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s Eye View of the World. Michael Pollan Random House, New York, NY 2001, 271 pp. Price: $24.95 ISBN 0375501290 (hardcover)
The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World ...
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 ...
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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 ...
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