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A Plant's-Eye View of the World
Random House
June 2002
On Sale: May 28, 2002
304 pages
ISBN: 0375760393
EAN: 9780375760396
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Non-Fiction
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.
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