FROM OUR EDITORS

Plants are no strangers to desire. They learned long ago to play on the desires of other species to fulfill their greatest longing -- propagating themselves. So naturally, humans find themselves turned on by certain plants, and with domestication they have learned to enhance the very qualities that drew them to a particular plant in the first place. Science writer and gardener Michael Pollan tells of four plants and their associated desires -- apples for sweetness; tulips for beauty; marijuana for intoxication; and potatoes for control -- in this very personal and wonderfully written book.

ANNOTATION

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.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

An Idaho farmer cultivates Russet Burbank potatoes so that a customer at a McDonald's half a world away can enjoy a long, golden french fry. A gardener plants tulip bulbs in the fall and, come spring, has a riotous patch of color to admire. Two straightforward examples of how humans act on nature to get what we want. Or are they? What if those potatoes and tulips have evolved to gratify certain human desires so that humans will help them multiply? What if, in other words, these plants are using us just as we use them?

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. What Michael Pollan ingeniously demonstrates in The Botany of Desire is that people and domesticated plant species have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship, a relationship that is just as common and essential to the way nature works.

In this utterly original narrative that blends history, memoir, and the best science writing, Pollan tells the story of four domesticated species -- the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato -- from the point of view of the plants. All four species are deeply woven into the fabric of our everyday lives, and Pollan illustrates how each has evolved a survival strategy based on satisfying one of humankind's most basic desires. The apple gratifies our taste for sweetness; the tulip attracts us with its beauty; marijuana offers intoxication; and the genetically modified potato gives us a sense of control over nature. And just as we've benefited from these plants, the plants, in the grand coevolutionary scheme that Pollan so brilliantly evokes, have done remarkably well by us.

Take the apple, for example. In nineteenth-century America, frontier dwellers far from the trading posts of the East lacked a source of sweetness in their diet -- and sugar with which to make alcohol. So when a man named John Chapman (a.k.a. Johnny Appleseed) floated down the Ohio River with bushels of apple seeds in his canoe, the settlers seized on the opportunity to grow the fruit on their new land. The pioneers' desire for sweetness was satisfied -- and the apple was given a whole new continent on which to blossom. So who is really domesticating whom?

Weaving fascinating anecdote and accessible science in gorgeous prose, Pollan takes the reader on an absorbing journey through the landscape of botany and desire. It is a journey that will change the way we think about our place in nature.

SYNOPSIS

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 ? thought 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.

FROM THE CRITICS

Burkhard Bilger - New York Times Book Review

[Pollan] has a wide-ranging intellect, an eager grasp of evolutionary biology and a subversive streak that helps him root out some wonderfully counterintuitive points. His prose both shimmers and snaps, and he has a knack for finding perfect quotes in the oddest places (George Eliot is somehow made to speak for the sense-attenuating value of a good high). Best of all, Pollan really loves plants. His first book described his education as a gardener, and that hands-and-knees experience animates every one of his descriptions -- whether of hydroponic marijuana (''I don't think I've ever seen plants that looked more enthusiastic'') or of roses (''flung open and ravishing in Elizabethan times, obligingly buttoned . . . up and turned prim for the Victorians.'').

Los Angeles Times

A whimsical, literary romp through man's perpetually frustrating and always unpredictable relationship with nature.

Entertainment Weekly

We can give no higher praise to the work of this superb science writer/ reporter than to say that his new book is as exciting as any you'll read.

New York Times Book Review

[Pollan] has a wide-ranging intellect, an eager grasp of evolutionary biology and a subversive streak that helps him to root out some wonderfully counterintuitive points. His prose both shimmers and snaps, and he has a knack for finding perfect quotes in the oddest places.... Best of all, Pollan really loves plants.

New York Times

Pollan shines a light on our own nature as well as on our implication in the natural world. Read all 8 "From The Critics" >

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

A fascinating and disturbing account of man's strange relationship with plants and plant science. Michael Pollan inspires one to rethink basic attitudes. Beautifully written, it is as compelling as a detective thriller. — (Penelope Hobhouse, author of On Gardening)

Anyone who has ever made personal contact with an apple, spud, tulip, or marijuana bud should read this book and be astonished at the eternal tango of men and plants, choreographed with wit, daring, and humanity by this botanist of desire who knows equally the power of plants and of words. — (Betty Fussell, author of My Kitchen Wars)

Like Tracy Kidder, Michael Pollan is a writer to immerse in. He's informed and amusing, with a natural sort of voice that spools on inventively beyond expectations into a controlled but productive and intriguing obsessiveness (whether on Johnny Appleseed or marijuana). A fine book. — (Edward Hoagland, author of Compass Points)

It is a rare pleasure to read a book of ideas so graceful and witty that it makes you smile - at times even laugh out loud - with delight as it challenges you to rethink important issues. — (Mark Kurlansky, author of The Basque History of the World)