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Title	:	The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World
Author	:	Michael Pollan
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	First Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 297 pages
Published	:	May 28th 2002 by Random House Trade Paperbacks (first published May 8th 2001)
Categories	:	Nonfiction. Science. Food and Drink. Food. Environment. Nature. History. Biology

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

Michael Pollan

Paperback | Pages: 297 pages

Rating: 4.06 | 45470 Users | 3240 Reviews

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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 apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. In telling the stories of four familiar species, Pollan illustrates how the plants have evolved to satisfy humankind’s most basic yearnings. And just as we’ve benefited from these plants, we have also done well by them. So who is really domesticating whom?

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Original Title:	The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World
ISBN:	0375760393 (ISBN13: 9780375760396)
Edition Language:	English
Literary Awards:	Borders Original Voices Award for Nonfiction (2001)

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

Ratings: 4.06 From 45470 Users | 3240 Reviews

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

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.



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

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 different

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

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.

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