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Title details for The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan - Available

The Botany of Desire

A Plant's-Eye View of the World

by Michael Pollan
Scott Brick
Audiobook
2 of 3 copies available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
2 of 3 copies available

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 tulop, 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, the plants have also benefited at least as much from their association with us. So who is really domesticating whom?

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Awards

  • Release date

    June 20, 2006

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 0977896528
      • File size: 254242 KB
      • Duration: 08:49:40

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      The autobiographies of four plants--a fruit (the apple), a flower (the tulip), a drug plant (cannabis), and a staple food (the potato)--will delight listeners with stories of greed, starvation, riches, and disaster. Who would know that Johnny Appleseed's success was because his apples were being used to make alcohol rather than pies, or that Dutch fortunes were made and lost with a unique tulip bulb? Scott Brick uses his skill with expression and tonal changes to make scientific information go down like the medicine with a spoonful of honey. He capitalizes on the author's casual style--the writer admits he smokes pot--to produce an audible intoxication. J.A.H. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from April 30, 2007
      On the sixth anniversary of its original publication, Pollan’s scientific twist on the human/plant symbiosis makes its audio debut. Pollan preaches a unique sort of romantic environmentalism where humans and plants satisfy each other’s desires for survival, enjoyment, satisfaction and escape. He uses the apple, tulip, Cannabis and potato to develop his ideas, offering the histories of each and how they developed reciprocal relationships with the humans with whom each interacted. Scott Brick exudes excitement and breathes life into the recording—the timbre of his voice offering just the right touch of humor and depth. Listeners will feel like Brick truly loves the book and loves reading it aloud. It’s a great combination for listeners: interesting subject, great writing and wonderful reading. Definitely not to be missed. (Reviews, Apr. 9, 2001)

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from April 9, 2001
      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."

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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