| | |  | Cuisipro Tools > | Home » » » The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World | | | | | | | Description: | | 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? | | | Features: | |
• ISBN13: 9780375760396
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
| | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Michael Pollan | | Paperback:
| 304 pages | | Publisher:
| Random House Trade Paperbacks | | Publication Date:
| May 28, 2002 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 0375760393 | | Package Length:
| 7.8 inches | | Package Width:
| 5.2 inches | | Package Height:
| 0.8 inches | | Package Weight:
| 0.5 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 186 reviews |
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| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
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Amazing plans of plantsFeb 21, 2010
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.
 A fascinating discussion of the relationship between plants & humansFeb 12, 2010
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.
Sensuous Read!Jan 04, 2010
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!
Plants and ManimalsDec 25, 2009
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.
Fascinating!Dec 11, 2009
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
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