The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World (original 2001; edition 2002)

Pollan's best!

The author’s starting premise in The Botany of Desire has two fascinating parts. First, that plants benefit greatly from domestication, so our relationship with them could just as easily be viewed as them domesticating us. And second, that domesticated plants have evolved to meet some basic human desire, making plants of the past a great way to learn about what previous civilizations valued. The bulk of the book is devoted to stories of particular plants that illustrate this point. Although I expected more of a history of the plants in question (the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato), I very much enjoyed the collection of anecdotes presented instead.

The Botany of Desire was definitely not what I expected or what I expect non-fiction in general to be like. The author isn’t especially objective and the history of the plants is anything but comprehensive. Despite those differences, this was one of the most enjoyable non-fiction books I’ve read all year. What the book most reminded me of was The Lives of a Cell, because a large part of the appeal was the author’s fascinating philosophical commentary on his personal observations. The writing was extremely well done; sometimes funny, often beautiful, and always enthusiastic.

As I mentioned, this wasn’t at all the comprehensive history I expected. What the author did instead was much more entertaining. The anecdotes he shared were all fascinating or funny or both and the number of fun facts I found to write down was overwhelming. Unfortunately, there were some sex analogies to explain plant behavior and a very pro-marijuana tone that would prevent me from handing this to a very young reader. Otherwise, it’s easy to read and a great introduction to the wonder of the natural world. With that one caveat, I would recommend this book to anyone, because I think the interesting anecdotes about plants familiar to everyone give it an almost universal appeal.

This review first published on Doing Dewey. ( )

Revisiting this ten years after my initial reading was fascinating, especially the potato & marijuana sections.

I recall thinking that Pollan sounded a little unhinged when he was talking about Monsanto's evil campaign to eradicate small farmers and the inherent dangers in various manipulations of seeds & genetics by Monsanto. Ten years on, he sounds prescient and perhaps a bit conservative.

There's been a huge pendulum swing with weed- when Pollan wrote this, the US was in one of its crazed drug-prosecution moments, sending people to the Big House for minuscule amounts of marijuana. Now, I drive by 3 or 4 medical cannabis dispensaries every day. I wonder, too, about the relative potencies of different strains of marijuana and the selective breeding that Pollan discusses here- I've never pursued this info, though I suppose it's available.

I love his tone which is not folksy but is certainly collegial and warm. Stellar writing, delightful subject. I would love to see an updated version of this one. ( )

Four common plants and I didn't know they each held such a rich history. Well, I was kind of familiar with marijuana's development (not from personal toking, honest Asian, but from being surrounded by tokers - hey, it was Oregon) and that it was completely villified in the "just say no" era of drug awareness education. The chapters on the apple, tulip, and potato offer cautionary evidence on the danger of destroying diversity in the name of commerce. Dratted industry and their shipping lives, appearance over taste, money over environmental responsibility; dratted consumers and our being trapped in busy schedules, cheap produce, the quick&easy, the short range.

Even though I'm probably being manipulated by the plants, I still want a garden in which to spread their genetic material. Plant pimp? If only.

On the subject of plants causing us to help them multiply by being appealing to us: I view this language as couching the concept in terms that we might understand, finding a common thread and expounding. I don't imagine Mr. Pollan meant plants as willfully selecting the characteristics that would cause us to replant and increase year after year. It's supposed to be a mutually beneficial interaction. If they could effect deliberate change in us, would they let us spray potatoes like that or make the mealy Red Delicious, I'm sure it was once actually delicious, the most common apple in US supermarkets? I wonder what it would be like if plants could fight us. Or maybe our dependence on the few varieties that now have weaknesses engendered by continuous cloning/inbreeding will result in a plant-revenge. ( )

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.

(That's sortof a joke.)

But I couldn't get into the first half of Botany of Desire, and the reason is that the book is padded. I've been curious about the reality behind the Johnny Appleseed legend, so it's terrific that he delved into it; but it would have made a great ten-page essay. Pollan stretches it for nearly 60 pages. He repeats himself (a lot); he circles around; he includes details about people he's met that are irrelevant and not all that interesting.

So far, so three star book.

The section on pot, though, gets terrifically - and sometimes hilariously - loopier. Halfway through this chapter - after an interesting history of what the War on Drugs has done for pot, and right at the point where, in other chapters, he would have started to repeat himself - he instead ends up in Amsterdam, trying the new breeds of pot for the first time, apparently, in years, and the rest of the chapter is one long, adoring love letter to the glories of weed - written (once admittedly, I suspect several other times not) while ecstatically baked. Non-pot-fans might find this chapter less endearing than I did, but for me, as a casual fan of the drug and, more importantly, as a guy who finds the question of what mind-altering drugs do for us interesting, it was the best part of the book. Too bad he still can't get past the slightly apologetic tone most grown-ups who still smoke pot feel forced to adopt - why not just mention it matter-of-factly as a normal thing many people do? That is, after all, what it is. But still. Fun stuff.

The final chapter on potatoes contains some of the usual "Holy shit, we have no idea what we're doing" stuff on genetic engineering, but his take on in it is interesting enough. Yeah, I dug this book. ( )