Michael Pollan is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine as well as a contributing editor at Harper’s magazine. He is the author of two prizewinning books: Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education and A Place of My Own: The Education of an Amateur Builder. Pollan lives in Connecticut with his wife and son.
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.
Amazon.com's Best of 2001
Working in his garden one day, Michael Pollan hit pay dirt in the form of an idea: do plants, he wondered, use humans as much as we use them? While the question is not entirely original, the way Pollan examines this complex coevolution by looking at the natural world from the perspective of plants is unique. The result is a fascinating and engaging look at the true nature of domestication.
In making his point, Pollan focuses on the relationship between humans and four specific plants: apples, tulips, marijuana, and potatoes. He uses the history of John Chapman (Johnny Appleseed) to illustrate how both the apple's sweetness and its role in the production of alcoholic cider made it appealing to settlers moving west, thus greatly expanding the plant's range. He also explains how human manipulation of the plant has weakened it, so that "modern apples require more pesticide than any other food crop." The tulipomania of 17th-century Holland is a backdrop for his examination of the role the tulip's beauty played in wildly influencing human behavior to both the benefit and detriment of the plant (the markings that made the tulip so attractive to the Dutch were actually caused by a virus). His excellent discussion of the potato combines a history of the plant with a prime example of how biotechnology is changing our relationship to nature. As part of his research, Pollan visited the Monsanto company headquarters and planted some of their NewLeaf brand potatoes in his gardenseeds that had been genetically engineered to produce their own insecticide. Though they worked as advertised, he made some startling discoveries, primarily that the NewLeaf plants themselves are registered as a pesticide by the EPA and that federal law prohibits anyone from reaping more than one crop per seed packet. And in a interesting aside, he explains how a global desire for consistently perfect French fries contributes to both damaging monoculture and the genetic engineering necessary to support it.
Pollan has read widely on the subject and elegantly combines literary, historical, philosophical, and scientific references with engaging anecdotes, giving readers much to ponder while weeding their gardens. Shawn Carkonen
原版看了一半,觉得读英文还是比较费力,然后借了译本,发现中文也很费力。。。对照着看完了,毕竟内容很有意思。对植物、人对自然的所谓改造都一些新的想法
评分作者波伦行家记者出身,文字优美、意境迷人,他打破几千年来酝酿出来的西方人本主义思想,试着从自然的角度,回看人与自然的关系。 于是,他就有了迷人的发现,原来那些百变的苹果之所以一变再变,不是人在主宰,而是植物利用了人类,达成它们把自己的基因繁殖最大化的理想。 ...
评分一 我超爱麦当劳的薯条:晶莹剔透,散发着迷人的香味,往嘴里轻轻一嚼……人生于是完满了。这就是柏拉图式的薯条啊,完美的艺术品! 怀着爱屋及乌的心情,我把目光转向了美国的爱达荷州,这里盛产马铃薯,每年向麦当劳提供成千上万吨优质的伯班克马铃薯(Burbank Potato)。由...
评分 评分先看这样一段话:“安德鲁韦尔把大麻描绘为一种‘活跃的安慰剂’,他认为大麻本身并没有创造而是触发了那种我们确定为‘高潮’的精神状态。这同样的精神状态,如果减去由麻醉品自身所带来的‘生理学上的喧闹’外,也能够由其他的方式来触发,比如冥思或者是有氧运动。” 我...
Jody gave this book to me. I have to say, this book is the most boring book I ever read so far. It's too boring to focus reading. It takes me 3 month to finish only 200 pages? My favorite part is potato. Boy! this writer is so good at dragging nothing out of something.
评分本来就喜欢Michael Pollan的文笔,这本应该是我读过的他的最好的。行文非常流畅,theory, evidence, anecdote, observation无缝衔接,看似无聊的话题被他讲的非常吸引人。应该会买实体书。
评分读完第一章实在受不了了,作者思维很跳跃而散文般的文风实在是太难follow,但是Conclusion很惊艳,the agency of botany, coevolutionary relation, BIODIVERSITY
评分每种植物历史和文化背景的部分比较有趣,有第一手资料,涉及科学的部分就主要是摘抄和听说了,还是what a plant knows比较可信。
评分i want to garden!!!
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