Full name: The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World

Author: Michael Pollan Year: 2001 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Non Fiction, Science, Award winners, History Purchase/reserch links: Goodreads OpenLibrary Amazon eBooks.com LibraryThing ISBNs: 9780375760396 0375760393

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 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? Similar books: Cooked by Michael Pollan Caffeine by Michael Pollan The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan Wicked Plants by Amy Stewart In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan The Code Book by Simon Singh The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee A Man on the Moon by Andrew Chaikin The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert Cod by Mark Kurlansky Salt by Mark Kurlansky The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough Hackers by Steven Levy The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan The Cracking Code Book by Simon Singh The Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston The Information by James Gleick Meetings with Remarkable Trees by Thomas Pakenham Reading the Forested Landscape by Tom Wessels