The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the WorldRandom House Publishing Group, 12.06.2001 - 304 Seiten The book that helped make Michael Pollan, the New York Times bestselling author of Cooked and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, one of the most trusted food experts in America 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—though 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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Seite
... Apple Chapter 2 Desire: Beauty / Plant: The Tulip Chapter 3 Desire: Intoxication / Plant: Marijuana Chapter 4 Desire: Control / Plant: The Potato Epilogue Acknowledgments Sources INTRODUCTION The Human Bumblebee The seeds of this book were.
... Apple Chapter 2 Desire: Beauty / Plant: The Tulip Chapter 3 Desire: Intoxication / Plant: Marijuana Chapter 4 Desire: Control / Plant: The Potato Epilogue Acknowledgments Sources INTRODUCTION The Human Bumblebee The seeds of this book were.
Seite
... beauty. Likewise, every Russet Burbank potato holds within it a treatise about our industrial food chain—and our taste for long, perfectly golden french fries. That's because we have spent the last few thousand years remaking these ...
... beauty. Likewise, every Russet Burbank potato holds within it a treatise about our industrial food chain—and our taste for long, perfectly golden french fries. That's because we have spent the last few thousand years remaking these ...
Seite
... say, or the precise tang of a Jonagold apple. The four desires I explore here are sweetness, broadly defined, in the story of the apple; beauty in the tulip's; intoxication in the story of cannabis; and control in the.
... say, or the precise tang of a Jonagold apple. The four desires I explore here are sweetness, broadly defined, in the story of the apple; beauty in the tulip's; intoxication in the story of cannabis; and control in the.
Seite
... beauty's gravitational pull without first understanding the flower, since it was the flower that first ushered the idea of beauty into the world the moment, long ago, when floral attraction emerged as an evolutionary strategy. By the ...
... beauty's gravitational pull without first understanding the flower, since it was the flower that first ushered the idea of beauty into the world the moment, long ago, when floral attraction emerged as an evolutionary strategy. By the ...
Seite
... beauty would transfix whole cultures; plants so compelling and useful and tasty they would inspire human beings to seed, transport, extol, and even write books about them. This is one of those books. So am I suggesting that the plants ...
... beauty would transfix whole cultures; plants so compelling and useful and tasty they would inspire human beings to seed, transport, extol, and even write books about them. This is one of those books. So am I suggesting that the plants ...
Inhalt
Beauty Plant The Tulip | |
Intoxication Plant Marijuana | |
Control Plant The Potato | |
Epilogue | |
Acknowledgments | |
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agriculture American animals Apollonian apple trees apple’s artificial selection beauty bees bloom brain bulb called cannabinoid cannabis century chemical cider civilization clones color Colorado potato beetle consciousness crop culture Dionysian Dionysus discovered domesticated drug Dutch evolutionary experience fact farm farmers field flowers Forsline Forsyth frontier fruit garden genes genetic engineering genetically modified green grow growers happened hashish Heath human desire hybrids imagination indica insects intoxication John Chapman Johnny Appleseed landscape least look magic marijuana McDonald’s Mechoulam memes metaphor MICHAEL POLLAN Mike Heath monoculture Monsanto natural selection nature’s never NewLeafs Ohio one’s orchard peony pesticide petals pollen potato probably psychoactive plants Queen of Night Raphael Mechoulam rose Russet Burbanks scientists seedling seeds Semper Augustus sense sexual simply sinsemilla soil species spuds Steve Young story sweetness taste there’s things tulip tulipomania turn wild apples wilderness