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. |
Im Buch
Ergebnisse 1-5 von 18
Seite
... natural information. The DNA of that tulip there, the ivory one with the petals attenuated like sabers, contains ... selection, transforming a tiny, toxic root node into a fat, nourishing potato and a short, unprepossessing wildflower ...
... natural information. The DNA of that tulip there, the ivory one with the petals attenuated like sabers, contains ... selection, transforming a tiny, toxic root node into a fat, nourishing potato and a short, unprepossessing wildflower ...
Seite
... natural selection, inventing photosynthesis (the astonishing trick of converting sunlight into food) and perfecting organic chemistry. As it turns out, many of the plants' discoveries in chemistry and physics have served us well. From ...
... natural selection, inventing photosynthesis (the astonishing trick of converting sunlight into food) and perfecting organic chemistry. As it turns out, many of the plants' discoveries in chemistry and physics have served us well. From ...
Seite
... natural selection, to compel other creatures to leave them alone: deadly poisons, foul flavors, toxins to confound the minds of predators. But many other of the substances plants make have exactly the opposite effect, drawing other ...
... natural selection, to compel other creatures to leave them alone: deadly poisons, foul flavors, toxins to confound the minds of predators. But many other of the substances plants make have exactly the opposite effect, drawing other ...
Seite
... nature is but a concatenation of accidents, culled by natural selection until the result is so beautiful or effective as to seem a miracle of purpose. By the same token, we're prone to overestimate our own agency in nature. Many of the ...
... nature is but a concatenation of accidents, culled by natural selection until the result is so beautiful or effective as to seem a miracle of purpose. By the same token, we're prone to overestimate our own agency in nature. Many of the ...
Seite
... natural selection has blurred. Whereas once humankind exerted its will in the relatively small arena of artificial selection (the arena I think of, metaphorically, as a garden) and nature held sway everywhere else, today the force of ...
... natural selection has blurred. Whereas once humankind exerted its will in the relatively small arena of artificial selection (the arena I think of, metaphorically, as a garden) and nature held sway everywhere else, today the force of ...
Inhalt
Beauty Plant The Tulip | |
Intoxication Plant Marijuana | |
Control Plant The Potato | |
Epilogue | |
Acknowledgments | |
Andere Ausgaben - Alle anzeigen
Häufige Begriffe und Wortgruppen
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