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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 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.
- Sales Rank: #120079 in Books
- Published on: 2001-05-08
- Released on: 2001-05-08
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.57" h x 1.00" w x 5.71" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 271 pages
Amazon.com Review
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
From Publishers Weekly
Erudite, engaging and highly original, journalist Pollan's fascinating account of four everyday plants and their coevolution with human society challenges traditional views about humans and nature. Using the histories of apples, tulips, potatoes and cannabis to illustrate the complex, reciprocal relationship between humans and the natural world, he shows how these species have successfully exploited human desires to flourish. "It makes just as much sense to think of agriculture as something the grasses did to people as a way to conquer the trees," Pollan writes as he seamlessly weaves little-known facts, historical events and even a few amusing personal anecdotes to tell each species' story. For instance, he describes how the apple's sweetness and the appeal of hard cider enticed settlers to plant orchards throughout the American colonies, vastly expanding the plant's range. He evokes the tulip craze of 17th-century Amsterdam, where the flower's beauty led to a frenzy of speculative trading, and explores the intoxicating appeal of marijuana by talking to scientists, perusing literature and even visiting a modern marijuana garden in Amsterdam. Finally, he considers how the potato plant demonstrates man's age-old desire to control nature, leading to modern agribusiness's experiments with biotechnology. Pollan's clear, elegant style enlivens even his most scientific material, and his wide-ranging references and charming manner do much to support his basic contention that man and nature are and will always be "in this boat together."
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
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.
Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
This is not just a botany book. It is a food book and book about money, about drugs and it's a mystical experience all in one!
By Pamela S. Wagner
This is my all-time favorite plant book, even though it concerns only four plants: apples, tulips, potatoes and of all things, marijuana.Nevertheless, the details that author Pollan shares with the reader about these four plants and their histories is both fascinating and indispensable knowledge for anyone even slightly interested in botany. And i must say that if you so much as eat apples or potatoes ( read: french fries?) or enjoy spring tulips or happened to ever have savored MaryJanes aroma, whether you "inhaled" or not, you will find something in this book that will rivet your attention. Just for an example, take Johnny Appleseed spreading those millions of apple trees. Who knew that those apples that came from those trees would never be fit for eating, because as Pollan tells us, apples don't come true from seed. Thus his conclusion is that Johnny Appleseed spread apples for one purpose only: the making of hard apple cider, which was the drink of choice in early America!
This is only one amazing tidbit from The Botany of Desire but it was such a great read and so jam-packed with information that i literally read it five times over the years since its publication. I highly recommend it to everyone.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Fascinating!
By BusyMom
I am as far removed from the sciences as anyone can be ... I am pretty hazy to what botany is and all that. I picked this book up because a friend of mine was going to watch the show and since I would rather read, I got this book. It may not be the "science" book of my youth, but I learned more in this slim volume than I ever did back in my school days. It is an eye-opener especially for this lay-person.
For a lot of the reviewers, the basic concept of plants "manipulating" the desires of humans is not a new one. For me, it is a new thought. I am not a gardener, though I do like my houseplants and have dreams of having my own garden someday. I am very new to the idea of botany and this book was enlightening for me in that respect.
Since I live in Ohio, the story of Johnny the Appleseed Man is a familiar legend in my youth and my sons just heard about him for the first time in their field trips this past fall. But Pollan made him come alive as he sketched a more thorough biography of the man who introduced the apple to the wilderness. Then Pollan combines the genetic aspect of pollination and cross-pollination with the legend of the man ... and made history and science very fascinating for this reader. He continues to do that with the tulips, the cannabis (marijuana) and finally, the potato (my absolute favorite veggie). In each section of the book, Pollan introduces thoughts and ideas to the layperson who may have just a little bit of knowledge of botany. If you're not familar with botany, this book is perfect for you. He doesn't write condescendingly like a lot of other writers do when they're talking about subjects that the average reader may not be familar with. He shares his excitement, thoughts and what he has learned with the reader and not only that, he made it fun.
Since there are a lot of reviews on this book, I will keep it short. However, the one thing that he wrote that stood out for me is: "With the exception of John Chapman, who had the imagination to identify with the bees, all these other botanists of desire went about their work from a straightforward and, it seems to me, blinkered humanist perspective. They took it for granted that domestication was something people did to plants, never the other way around." (Page 243)
That is what I thought orginally until I read this book and now ... with a different twist on perspectives, I will not be looking at plants the same way again.
12/10/09
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Great read.
By J. Hernandez
fabulous book talking about the history of the apple, tulip, cannabis, and the potato. Every chapter was more interesting than the last. The potato chapter is now out of date, given what we know about the relative harmlessness of GMOs.
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