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

by Michael Pollan

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.

Our desires are simply more grist for evolution’s mill, no different from a change in the weather:

That’s why it makes just as much sense to think of agriculture as something the grasses did to people as a way to conquer the trees.

There was an old tradition in northern Europe linking the grape, which flourished all through Latin Christendom, with the corruptions of the Catholic Church, while casting the apple as the wholesome fruit of Protestantism.