The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World
Book Review: An engaging piece of practical history
Summary: 5 Stars
Michael Pollan's charaming and erudite book is the story of the development of the culture of four different plants: the apple, potato, tulip and marijuana. `Culture' is to be understood in two different ways. First there's the effect of the plants in question on human cultures and second the demands the plants place on people for their culture or care.
Don't be distracted by Pollan's provocative hypothesis. We and our favorite plants have `co-evolved'. That is, they have used us as much as we have used them. The apple has snared us with its sweetness and so has manipulated us into spreading it throughout the world. The same could be said for the beauty of the tulip, the reliability and simplicity of the potato and the magic power of marijuana. Sure. Let's remember that we're the ones with the consciousness here and file that co-evolution business away in the metaphor drawer and get on with Pollan's main business.
The business in question is an examination of where our stewardship of plants' destinies is leading us. The genetically-altered potato is his best case. The frightening possibility is that a potato that uses a `natural' gene to fight off pests runs the risk of fostering resistant strains of the pest. Once that happens, an entire natural defense against pests disappears. Unfortunately, the losers in the process are not just the farmers who used the genetically-altered crop but everyone whose crop is endangered by the new resistant pest.
So this should make it a snap decision: genetically-modified, bug-resistant potatoes are bad. But then Pollan tells us about the dreadful diet of chemicals that are used now to fight pests. The recital of the potatoes' dosages would be enough to turn anyone off to french fries forever.
Notice that this is no longer a matter of co-evolution. This is a question of human direction of evolution (the potato seems to have no opinion on the matter). The outcomes are not trivial-genetic alterations remain in the environment and reproduce themselves in a way that chemical spills, for instance, do not.
In fact, it's possible that the matter may already be out of our hands. The chemically nurtured potato exists because big food-processing companies demand it. They demand those potatoes because McDonald's (for one) demands it. And the big junk-food chains demand it because we do.
So in the end, there are three partners in the evolutionary rowboat. There are the plants, there's us and there's this new `organism' called the industrial food business. Pollan's thoughtful book leaves me wondering if all three of us make it .
Lynn Hoffman, author of The New Short Course in Wine and bang-BANG, the forthcoming novel of sex and gunplay from kunati press.
Book Review: A Three Hundred Page Sleeping Pill
Summary: 1 Stars
I was given three months to read this book, and each time I picked it up I threw it down in disgust. Between the none-stop Johnny Appleseed referances to the Collegian's Guide to Growing Pot, it is amazing I got through it. I am convinced he was once a Columbian drug lord.Book Review: Great Read
Summary: 5 Stars
I can't stop telling people about this book. Entertaining. Educational. I bought the book a year ago and it sat in a stack I planned to get to...big mistake...looking forward to starting his current book and I hope he's writing his next one.Book Review: unusual book
Summary: 4 Stars
I bought this book for a workshop I planned to take. It's unusual; I can't decide where it belongs in the scheme of things. Since I have a practical bent, I enjoyed about half of it. The other half was mostly "bull," kind of a history of plants, such as marijuana, the Irish potato, and the tulip. Book Review: Enjoyable Read
Summary: 4 Stars
I read this book over a weekend, and found it thoroughly enjoyable. The author does have a distinctive style, chatty with a tendency to go off on tangents. Not to everyones taste but I liked it.
Some reviewers have noted that the science could be more rigorous. That is what pubmed is for, this is pop-science, written by a journalist, and one is of the better offerings within the genre.