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The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World
by
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 fu
...more
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Kindle Edition, 304 pages
Published
June 12th 2001
by Random House
(first published May 8th 2001)
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Start your review of The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World

I love books that open my eyes, teach me something, and even go so far as to re-educate me on the fallacies foisted upon me by ill-informed elementary school teachers. To that last end, I found the chapter on Johnny Appleseed very enlightening as well as highly entertaining.
Michael Pollan is more humorous and, let's just say, more adventurous than one might expect from a journalist/botanist (see his passages on hallucinogenic plants.) I appreciate his willingness to "go first" in the same way I ...more
Michael Pollan is more humorous and, let's just say, more adventurous than one might expect from a journalist/botanist (see his passages on hallucinogenic plants.) I appreciate his willingness to "go first" in the same way I ...more

Jun 09, 2015
Carmen
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Non-Fiction Fans, Gardeners
All those plants care about is what every being cares about on the most basic genetic level: making more copies of itself...
Did I choose to plant these potatoes, or did the potato make me do it?...
All these plants, which I'd always regarded as the objects of my desire, were also, I realized, subjects, acting on me, getting me to do things for them they couldn't do for themselves.
Pollan posits that plants are clever little buggers who have tricked and enslaved the human race into doing their bidd ...more
Did I choose to plant these potatoes, or did the potato make me do it?...
All these plants, which I'd always regarded as the objects of my desire, were also, I realized, subjects, acting on me, getting me to do things for them they couldn't do for themselves.
Pollan posits that plants are clever little buggers who have tricked and enslaved the human race into doing their bidd ...more

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

The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan introduces the possibility to the reader that plants are using insects, animals and humans to ensure their own survival. An interesting book about the symbiosis between all living organism and how Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory of natural selection is happening.
In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan ingeniously demonstrates how people and domesticated plants have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship. He mast...more

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 like a strong word ...more
Now, desire sounds like a strong word ...more

Apr 10, 2019
Cathrine ☯️
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
audible-or-audiobook
4 🍎 🌷 🍁 🥔 (What, no cannabis leaf emoji? Leave it to Canada to provide a maple leaf stand-in)
Sweetness — Beauty — Intoxication — Control
Sex — Loveliness — Desire — Hunger
In 4 parts on a grand botanical scale and the perfect accompaniment on my nature walks.
Sweetness — Beauty — Intoxication — Control
Sex — Loveliness — Desire — Hunger
In 4 parts on a grand botanical scale and the perfect accompaniment on my nature walks.

This is a marvellous book, which discusses the science, sociology, aesthetics and culture, relating to four plants.
Apples
Tulips
Marijuana
Potatoes
Because of who I am, the things that interested me most were the tulip and potato sections.
With the first, he discusses the notorious obsession surrounding tulip cultivation in Holland in the 17th century. With the second he discusses a genetically modified potato which was on sale in the US at the time he wrote the book, in 2001.
The potato is a variety ...more
Apples
Tulips
Marijuana
Potatoes
Because of who I am, the things that interested me most were the tulip and potato sections.
With the first, he discusses the notorious obsession surrounding tulip cultivation in Holland in the 17th century. With the second he discusses a genetically modified potato which was on sale in the US at the time he wrote the book, in 2001.
The potato is a variety ...more

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 want the autho ...more
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 want the autho ...more

Packed with food-related history, trivia and stories, Michael Pollan attempts to explain how four types of plants have had such a large effect on humanity.
"We automatically think of domestication as something we do to other species, but it makes just as much sense to think of it as something certain plants and animals have done to us, a clever evolutionary strategy for advancing their own interests."
I believe that our lives are intimately intertwined with our environment, even if we can't quite ...more
"We automatically think of domestication as something we do to other species, but it makes just as much sense to think of it as something certain plants and animals have done to us, a clever evolutionary strategy for advancing their own interests."
I believe that our lives are intimately intertwined with our environment, even if we can't quite ...more

Jan 05, 2021
Gretchen Rubin
added it
I love the work of Michael Pollan, and his accounts of the apple, the rose, marijuana, and the potato are fascinating. I see the world in a new way.

Reminded me of A History of the World in 6 Glasses with the introduction, except it was even worse. Very long, repetitious, & kept wandering into pseudoscientific philosophy. As well as Scott Brick read this, it was incredibly boring listening to the same points for half an hour, so I quit.
Yes, it is interesting to contemplate whether we domesticated a plant or it domesticated us. The evolutionary imperative of any organism is to spread copies of its DNA. Yuval Noah Harari mentioned it in Sapie ...more
Yes, it is interesting to contemplate whether we domesticated a plant or it domesticated us. The evolutionary imperative of any organism is to spread copies of its DNA. Yuval Noah Harari mentioned it in Sapie ...more

It may sound like science fiction, but let me assure you... it's not.
Indeed, Pollan writes very well about the history and effects of four plants that have a huge impact on our lives... even if we may never have had two of them. His tone and his command of the various histories managed to make his writing both personal and wildly interesting.
I'm speaking of Apples, Tulips, Cannabis, and Potatoes, however.
I'll assume that everyone has had apples and potatoes, but I can also assume that everyone i ...more
Indeed, Pollan writes very well about the history and effects of four plants that have a huge impact on our lives... even if we may never have had two of them. His tone and his command of the various histories managed to make his writing both personal and wildly interesting.
I'm speaking of Apples, Tulips, Cannabis, and Potatoes, however.
I'll assume that everyone has had apples and potatoes, but I can also assume that everyone i ...more

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 shipping lives, ap
...more

Wow! Just wow! This was another museum book club pick from our Minneapolis Institute of Art; while I like Michael Pollan it's unlikely I would have otherwise read this fascinating book. Even the description made it look doubtful that it would be my cup of tea. Boy, was I wrong!
Pollan looks at four human desires and four plants that satisfy those desires to explore the interdependence of humans and plants. The desires/plants are Sweet/Apple, Beauty/Tulip, Intoxication/Cannabis and Control/Potato. ...more
Pollan looks at four human desires and four plants that satisfy those desires to explore the interdependence of humans and plants. The desires/plants are Sweet/Apple, Beauty/Tulip, Intoxication/Cannabis and Control/Potato. ...more

May 13, 2007
Lisa (not getting friends updates) Vegan
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
everyone, unless they loathe all non-fiction
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
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this was like NPR in printed form, and felt intended to be read in that medium. the potato chapter was great, the marijuana chapter irritating, the tulip chapter needlessly verbose (but full of some of the book's best trivia), the apple chapter...quixotic. it's all grotesquely bucolic, and the lack of any synthesis at the end left me underwhelmed. short, and by all means worth reading if it's all you have available.
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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.
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This is an enjoyable book that wanders back and forth through the subjects of botany, history, and literary philosophy. An example of the later is quoted below:
"For look into a flower, and what do you see? Into the very heart of nature's double nature--that is, the contending energies of creation and dissolution, the spring toward complex form and the tidal pull away from it. Apollo and Dionysus were names the Greeks gave to these two faces of nature, and nowhere in nature is their contest as pl ...more
"For look into a flower, and what do you see? Into the very heart of nature's double nature--that is, the contending energies of creation and dissolution, the spring toward complex form and the tidal pull away from it. Apollo and Dionysus were names the Greeks gave to these two faces of nature, and nowhere in nature is their contest as pl ...more

What a wonderful book!
Desire. There are many forms of it. It can be a food craving, it can be sexual between two of the same species, it can be the need to possess something, …
But what does all that have to do with botany? Well, humans aren’t the only ones wanting something. Plants, like any other life form on this planet, have desires too. The desire to spread and multiply for example.
Not to mention that beings can use another’s desire for their own advantage.
We have lived with plants for a lon ...more
Desire. There are many forms of it. It can be a food craving, it can be sexual between two of the same species, it can be the need to possess something, …
But what does all that have to do with botany? Well, humans aren’t the only ones wanting something. Plants, like any other life form on this planet, have desires too. The desire to spread and multiply for example.
Not to mention that beings can use another’s desire for their own advantage.
We have lived with plants for a lon ...more

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.
(Tha ...more
(Tha ...more

Description: 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 appl
...more

Michael Pollan has convinced me to buy only organic potatoes from now on.
The Botany of Desire is a book which presages two of Pollan’s later books, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and How to Change Your Mind; the other two books were written later, and are better books, in my opinion. That said, there is much to learn in reading the Botany of Desire (BoD, hereinafter). Pollan, like me, is a gardener, so I have common beliefs on many issues touching land use and food; anyone who has gardened for a long t ...more
The Botany of Desire is a book which presages two of Pollan’s later books, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and How to Change Your Mind; the other two books were written later, and are better books, in my opinion. That said, there is much to learn in reading the Botany of Desire (BoD, hereinafter). Pollan, like me, is a gardener, so I have common beliefs on many issues touching land use and food; anyone who has gardened for a long t ...more

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

Jan 16, 2008
Don LaVange
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Jason, Dad, Jono
Recommended to Don by:
Scott Abbott
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 and potatoes Pollan sets out plainly ...more
Here, using apples (with their amazing capacity to evolve based on seeds that don't grow true to the parent), tuplips, cannabis and potatoes Pollan sets out plainly ...more

This may be my favorite Pollan book of all time. It's so beautifully written and full of wonder at the plant world. The section on tulips as a flower embodying Apollo and Dionysus and about the apple were just brilliant.
However, I do think the goes a little nuts about GMOs at the end. I'm tempted to go with him into skepticism, but I am not sure it's warranted. I think the dangers of monoculture are real, but I am not as concerned about the GMOs as he is ...more
However, I do think the goes a little nuts about GMOs at the end. I'm tempted to go with him into skepticism, but I am not sure it's warranted. I think the dangers of monoculture are real, but I am not as concerned about the GMOs as he is ...more

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 (sweet
...more

Do you talk to your plants? More to the point, do you think your plants talk back to you? If so, I have just the book for you…
The Botany of Desire explores the relationship between plants and humans, but rather than focusing on human agency, food journalist and gardener Michael Pollan tells the story from the plants’ point of view. He takes the idea of co-evolution as his starting point: the idea that two species evolve in a mutually dependent manner leading to the selection of certain traits. P ...more
The Botany of Desire explores the relationship between plants and humans, but rather than focusing on human agency, food journalist and gardener Michael Pollan tells the story from the plants’ point of view. He takes the idea of co-evolution as his starting point: the idea that two species evolve in a mutually dependent manner leading to the selection of certain traits. P ...more

Apr 22, 2015
Ms.pegasus
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
anyone interested in gardening or food
Recommended to Ms.pegasus by:
browsing at my local bookstore
Michael Pollan approaches the relationship between plants and humans through the aperture of the plant. The altered perspective displays the multiple props of genetic diversity — color, shape, size, fragrance, taste and robustness — offered to seduce the gardener's favors. Of course Pollan realizes that intent cannot be ascribed to the plant. These are merely the standard tools available to the plant for survival and procreation. ”Our desires are simply more grist for evolution's mill, no differ
...more

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.
*********
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, more irritatingly than pr ...more
*********
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, more irritatingly than pr ...more
topics | posts | views | last activity | |
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Play Book Tag: The Botany of Desire / Michael Pollan. 3.5 stars | 5 | 20 | Apr 30, 2016 04:47PM | |
Gering Book Junkies: Michael Pollen's birthday is today | 1 | 5 | Feb 06, 2015 01:59PM | |
Gering Book Junkies: Apples | 2 | 5 | Dec 04, 2014 08:06PM | |
Gering Book Junkies: Michael Pollan Interview | 1 | 8 | Dec 02, 2014 08:59AM |
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8 trivia questions
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“For it is only by forgetting that we ever really drop the thread of time and approach the experience of living in the present moment, so elusive in ordinary hours.”
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“Witches and sorcerers cultivated plants with the power to "cast spells" -- in our vocabulary, "psychoactive" plants. Their potion recipes called for such things as datura, opium poppies, belladona, hashish, fly-agaric mushrooms (Amanita muscaria), and the skin of toads (which can contain DMT, a powerful hallucinogen). These ingredients would be combined in a hempseed-oil-based "flying ointment" that the witches would then administer vaginally using a special dildo. This was the "broomstick" by which these women were said to travel. (119)”
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