Customer Rating: 
Summary: Funny, gentle and world changing
Comment: It is a rare science book that evokes such an emotional response in me. "Beak of the Finch" by Jonathan Weiner is one, and "The Botany of Desire" is another. Pollan's discussion of four archetypal plants (apple, tulip, marijuana and potato) and our shared history with them makes for some wonderfully interesting reading. He has a great gift for allegory and metaphor, and these plants became real characters that I cared about deeply. Sprinkled with just the kind of details that I love most, the book reads like a daydream of a letter from home. Here are some examples of what I mean: the fact that without flowers there would be no mammals, which is likely the reason we human beings are partial to flowers, the overpowering smell of a marijuana hothouse in Amsterdam, the trick the French king used to encourage his starving people to eat the feared novel food from the new world: potatoes (he posted armed guards around his potato garden, but only during the day), that the beauty of a highly prized variegated tulip (worth the price of a house in today's terms) is due to viral infection, and a very chilling, yet compassionate description of industrial farming and the men who run these farms.
I bored my husband silly while I read this book, because it was just one of those books that is so fascinating you kind of can't stop yourself from saying stuff like, "HEY! Did you know marijuana growers expose their crops to 24 hours of light for the first few weeks and that they can bring a crop to maturity in 8 weeks?"
Eventually, Pollan reveals the full impact of our actions on the plant society. Not in a pedantic way, but with a brand of kindness and hope that we will understand the stewardship role that we have always had in our relationship with the plant world. The last lines of this book put it too beautifully for me to paraphrase, when he cites again the charming eccentric Johnny 'Appleseed' Chapman, and his voyage that encouraged and sustained so many of America's young cities. "I'm thinking specifically of the way he rigged up his canoe...the two hulls side by side, so that the weight of the appleseeds balanced the weight of the man, each helping to keep the other steady on the river. Laughable as an example of naval architecture, perhaps, but seaworthy as a metaphor, surely. Chapman's craft, his example, invites us to imagine a very different kind of story about man and nature: one that shrinks the distance between the two so that we might again begin to see them for what they are, and in spite of everything, will always be, which is in this boat together."
Like flowering plants, this book is beautiful, gentle, and, if people listen, world changing.
Don't miss this book.
