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Dec 17, 2009

Emily rated it:

Okay, okay, books by Michael Pollan are clearly a fad right now, but I have bought into it whole-heartedly. He is an amazing, amazing writer: he makes me want to plant a garden, to tour his garden (his bedroom? what?), to only eat organic food, and to find out the story and origin of every morsel of food I put in my body. But he does it in a way that isn't overly preachy or agenda-driven. Instead, he lets you get what he is saying while at the same time telling an engaging, well-researched story More...

0 comments like (23 people liked it)

Dec 21, 2011

Jessica rated it:

just as a warning, the below is not really about the book by pollan at all (which is great, btw!), but is mostly some really juvenile hatin' on thoreau. so if you read it, shut up, i warned you; i needed to get some trash-talking out of my system before going on w/ my day.

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so i cannot, for the life of me, read thoreau. & this may not be entirely his fault. it may not just be that i find him frustratingly ignorant, pompous, rambling, lacking cohesion & coherence, m More...

3 comments like (5 people liked it)

Sep 19, 2011

Alex rated it:

Pollan represents one of my favorite types of writers: modern polymaths who can bring scientific, historic and literary knowledge to bear on whatever they're writing about. When it's done well, I don't care what the question is; for instance, tulips aren't really my thing, despite their presence on my dining room table right now. The conversation between history, literature and science really interests me, though, which is why nearly all of the books I read fall into one of those categories.
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18 comments like (5 people liked it)

Nov 13, 2008

Trevor rated it:

In East Asian cultures – according to my increasingly Japanese daughters – the number four brings bad luck. This is because it sounds a bit like the word for death. Clearly the number four has no such associations for Michael Pollan. The Omnivore’s Dilemma is based around four meals and this one is based around four plants. I’ve done more than just enjoy these two books, they have completely enchanted me whilst also informing me and keeping me greatly amused.

Now, desire sounds li More...

4 comments like (11 people liked it)

Apr 16, 2008

Jen rated it:

I've wanted to read this book ever since it came out, but, so far, I've been pretty deeply disappointed by it. From the jacket copy and reviews I'd read, I'd come to expect a poetic lay-science book about the entwined destinies of plants and humans. Hell, that's what the author's introduction led me to expect, too.

I did not expect, nor want, most of the chapter on the apple to be more concerned about the historical realities of Johnny Appleseed than with the apple itself. I didn't More...

4 comments like (7 people liked it)

Oct 03, 2007

Eh?Eh! rated it:

Four common plants and I didn't know they each held such a rich history. Well, I was kind of familiar with marijuana's development (not from personal toking, honest Asian, but from being surrounded by tokers - hey, it was Oregon) and that it was completely villified in the "just say no" era of drug awareness education. The chapters on the apple, tulip, and potato offer cautionary evidence on the danger of destroying diversity in the name of commerce. Dratted industry and their shipp More...

5 comments like (19 people liked it)

Jan 20, 2008

Don rated it:

I read this a few days after "The Omnivore's Dilemma", and began it the day after picking up "In Defense of Food". I loved the former, thought the latter was thin and a resaying of what he'd already said. This book was a beautiful book, though not the tome that O.D was, it's beautifully written. It also sets the stage nicely for O.D.

Here, using apples (with their amazing capacity to evolve based on seeds that don't grow true to the parent), tuplips, cannabis an More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Sep 06, 2007

Deborah rated it:

I actually found this book a couple of years before Omnivore's Dilemma, and was impressed with the writing style: part essay, part research, part memoir, and all so well edited that there doesn't seem to be one wasted word. Not nearly as long as Omnivore, you can see how this book was the necessary first step for Pollan toward thinking about the relationship - and he does mean relationship, give and take - between what we treat as food or consumables, and human beings. The four consumables he More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 08, 2007

Kat rated it:

Pollan's The Botany of Desire is by far one of the best books I have ever read, and it is one of those books that has changed my world view for the better. Pollan takes his readers on an odyssey through the natural histories of four plants that have been important to the course of human history, and relates them to a certain form of desire that he believes to be inherent in each and every person. He chronicles the potato (sustenance), the tulip (beauty), cannabis (pleasure), and the apple (swe More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Lisa rated it:

I really enjoyed this book (and enjoyed the lecture I attended when the author talked about the book and answered questions.) He talks about 4 crops: apples, potatoes, tulips and marijuana, and the interactions between them and humans: history, culture, human psychology, and science, etc. I knew nothing much about botany and have never been particularly interested in that branch of science, but this book was a very easy read and I found it extremely fascinating. Gave it as a gift on a couple of More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 27, 2008

Imogen rated it:

I was going on an airplane so I wanted to bring lots of different books for the different kinds of grumpy I get when I am in transit for a long time: I brought Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, Asking For It, The Great Perhaps- all of which were mine- and I raided my girlfriend's bookcase for this one, expecting this would be the last thing I'd pick up. I mean, I want to know about Michael Pollan, he is huge and important, right? And everybody in Berkeley wants him to be Obama's Secretary More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 28, 2008

Lightreads rated it:

A brief but compelling history of four plants whose genetic destiny has been markedly altered by man – the apple, the tulip, cannabis, and the potato. Pollan’s argument is that, though we see domestication as a strictly top-down, subject-to-object process, there really may also be some co-evolutionary force at work. Johnny Appleseed’s efforts were to the overwhelming advantage of apple genetic proliferation, and the science of mass potato farming means more seeds are planted every year. But we’l More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 30, 2008

Alexandra rated it:

I couldn't get into this book at all and gave up reading it after the first chapter. The premise was a good one, but Pollan's writing style drove me up the wall. I called it quits when he started analogizing Johnny Appleseed and Dionysius. Too much navel-gazing and not enough substance.

3 comments like (3 people liked it)

Oct 20, 2011

Amit rated it:

If the science books I have read reveal science writers, then Pollan is among the top three! Here is Pollan cleverly asking the reader to think of plants not as any vegetative material that we gulp down, kick off the ground, and cut down daily, but as species - just like us. The question he asks is this - if a human and a plant were JUST two species in the Darwinian world of struggle for survival, then didn't the Potato do a better job at being fruitful and multiply, or perhaps outright world do More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 05, 2011

Dolly rated it:

After reading The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, I was determined to read more by Michael Pollan. It took me three years to get around to reading this book, but I'm glad I finally did. It's a bit more metaphysical than the other books I've read by him, but still very informative and interesting. I was fascinated by his exploration of the four different kinds of plants and the human desires sated by each. And I was amused by his continual revisitation of the Dionysus/Apo More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 27, 2008

Jenn rated it:

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0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 13, 2008

Frances rated it:

This was a really great read, and I've never really liked Botany or had much of a green thumb. Pollan covers botany well, but he also brings in history, philosophy, neuroscience, economics and many other fields of interest in this study of 4 plants: apples, tulips, marijuana, and potatoes. As far as non-fiction books go, I can't imagine it being any better.

Many other reviewers have complained that he did not stick to his argument that plants, by catering to human desires, actually More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 09, 2007

Elfscribe rated it:

In highly readable prose, Michael Pollan explores the ways four different plants have influenced human culture and history and in turn been influenced by human manipulation. These plants are the apple tree, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. In four different essays,he defines our relationship with these plants in terms of how they fulfill a human desire: apples = sweetness, tulip = beauty, marijuana = intoxication, and potato = control. The stories of these plants are absolutely fascinating More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 27, 2007

emily rated it:

i enjoyed this book, but i didn't find it as interesting as _the omnivore's dilemma_. but then, you can't win 'em all, can you? as with _the OD_, the last chapter (potatoes) was the most fascinating, making me feel like i really never want to eat potatoes again, unless i know their origin.

this is a little off the subject, but the more i read the more i want to leave the united states. what is wrong with us here? seriously. i mean, we let corporations like monsanto use us as guinea p More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Sep 21, 2007

Jennifer rated it:

Michael Pollan constantly forces me to rethink my relationship with nature and society. He writes without ever feeling dogmatic, yet is able to shed some harsh light on aspects of our relationship with nature and each other that we shouldn't ignore.

The book is broken up into four different plants and an associated human desire that helped shape them; the apple:sweetness, the tulip: beauty, marijuana: intoxication, and the potato: control.

Of course, none of these plants w More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 03, 2007

Manderson rated it:

In a kind of a meandering, relaxed writing style, Michael Pollan tells the tale of apples, tulips, cannabis, and potatoes and their co-evolution with human desire. Although I agree somewhat with his premise---that plants also influence human desires, not just vice versa---I never found that he fully developed a convincing proof of it. Rather, he just gently threads a tangential narrative about his subjects, as if he were having a conversation with you in his study while looking out the window a More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 05, 2010

Ken-ichi rated it:

Wonderful, wonderful book, full of fantastic info and insights. My main critique of the book is Pollan's central conceit, and the language used to express it: plant species have domesticated humanity just as much as humanity has domesticated them. My problem is his constant insertion of agency into the process of evolution and mixing metaphors of individuals and of species. Flowers are not individually clever, and neither are species of flowers. Flowers do not manipulate bees in the same way th More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 01, 2007

Sharon rated it:

Really interesting (if at times stretched to fit) hypothesis that plants have exerted their own influence on humans to propagate the species.

The book was uneven at times, and the best chapters in my mind were the apple (sweetness) and the potato (control). Who knew that all modern apple trees are descendants of a single tree of their type, grafted an infinite number of times – that if planted from seed each apple tree would produce its own distinct variety? The chapter on the pot More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Dec 10, 2007

Luke rated it:

The Botany of Desire was written in language that made it obvious that Michael Pollan likes to hear himself write. His ideas were interesting, following four plants, the potato, cannabis, the apple, and the tulip through their journey with mankind. I like how he approaches the topic, observing not only what people have done to the plants to develop them to our own use, but also how the plants have in some ways used us for their own ends. It is true that we, while we think we are masters of our o More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 27, 2009

Dani rated it:

This book was incredibly thought provoking - you'll think about our (human) relationship with food and plants in a whole new way. The first chapter of the book that dealt with apples and the desire for sweetness was too much about Jonny Appleseed in my opinion. Yes, he was an important figure, but I got bored and wanted to know more about the worldwide history and appeal of the apple. The rest of the sections were much better, my favorite being the potato (the tulip was fabulous as well). If you More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 14, 2007

kate rated it:

I found this book very interesting. I don't normally like reading nonfiction, but The Botany of Desire blends history, memoir, and science with an easy conversational tone. I never felt like I was being talked down to (my complaint for other popular science/nonfiction books); instead, it was as though author Michael Pollan had sat down to talk with me and had really cool things to say. The book associates four plants with their abilities to satisfy human desires and impulses -- the apple wit More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Drew rated it:

I am a big fan of Michael Pollan, and would recommend his works to any friend who enjoys a mix of history, politics, food, and the natural world. This is not his best work, but it is still pretty good. The book follows four plants and discusses how they reflect human desires, and vice versa. The plants/desire combinations, if I remember them correctly, included: beauty/tulip, sweetness/apple, intoxication/marijuana, and control/potato.

While some of Mr. Pollan's arguments occasio More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Meg rated it:

The author adds a wrinkle to our thoughts about domestication by arguing that plants have selected for a preference for their qualities in humans, leading to their cultivation, ensuring their survival. Rather than us manipulating the traits of our crops, we've been manipulated by them!

Though I disagree with this premise (you can never determine an evolutionary reason for something, and it's hardly parsimonious to think of organisms acting as agents of selection on our perceptions of More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 16, 2007

Sparky rated it:

I've been reading and re-reading this book since last autumn. My friends drove me to a haunted house, but I was too scared to go inside. So I skipped out on the screaming guy with the chainsaw and read outside instead. I've been hooked ever since. Recently, and as a kind gesture, my boyfriend's begun reading to me before bed. This is always my book of choice. Nothing is more soothing than an oration of plant history. Tell me more Michael Pollan about the many different types of apples, why some More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Joanna rated it:

This book has everything! Mythology, philosophy, history, evolutionary theory, psychology, social commentary and biotechnology. A very quick and interesting read. I've looked at plants a little differently ever since I picked it up! My favorite part was the chapter on the wild apple forests of Kazakhstan. Pollan is witty, thought-provoking, and creative in his research approach. It was a pure delight, and I missed reading it the minute I finished it. I promise you will be scrubbing your potatoes More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)