Thus he divides his book into four parts, each dealing with a specific plant and a human desire: apples and sweetness, the tulip and beauty, cannabis and intoxication and lastly, the common potato and believe it or not, the desire for control. This book is a mix of fascinating history, approachable science, philosophical whimsy, humorous insights into nature, and simply good writing.

The history of the tulip is well told. From its development by the Ottoman turks through to the period of "tulipomania" that saw it achieve "world domination" in its appeal to humans, but ironically at the same time contributing to a sort of madness that gripped the Dutch, and brought about economic ruin in 17th century Holland. The history of the cannabis plant is also very interesting as are the authors comments on the drug war, specifically how it has simply sent growers indoors where a much more potent hybrid has been developed. If you look at the world from the plant's view as Mr Pollan tries to do throughout, you would simply say that this was probably planned by the cannabis plant in the first place!

The best expression of this plant view of the world is provided by the following example. Even where we know that we were the active agent, in control, the domesticator, and have brought nature and plants under our thumb through agriculture, Mr Pollan says "it makes just as much sense to think of agriculture as something the grasses did to people as a way to conquer the trees."

Enjoy this fascinating bit of history, evolutionary biology, nature writing, and pure good fun, and...what is that plant over there doing?


where's the editor?   March 20, 2002
 22 out of 45 found this review helpful

A good editor could have trimmed this to about half its size and the result would have produced an only marginally passable text. The idea that angiosperms have co-opted humans is a very thin hook to hang a book on. Plants achieved this with fauna millions of years before man came on the scene. The earths reductive oxygen rich atmosphere is the result of the huge sucess of angiosperms; plants don't need human intervention, they've done quite well without us. Pollan confuses the reader further by suggesting that plants are sort of able to think up ways to make themselves more atractive to humans. He refutes his own theisis over and over however, when he lets slip that apple horticulture is made up of grafting a tiny selection of varieties; that covert pot growers never allow the plants to actually seed out; that modern potato agruculture leaves as little to nature as possible. These practices do little or nothing to help the plant in question pass genetic material into future generations, rather, plants selected by humans over time, may be so co-opted by us to have become sort of genetic dead ends. The book becomes a polemic for anti bt technology in the potato chapter ,whiich quickly makes that section mind bendingly dull. Other reviewers have suggested that the chapters would stand alone in the New Yorker but I don't think that weekly would allow such a flawed idea to get past the editors but if it did , they'd have a lot of cutting to do.


Do not be fooled by the title   October 23, 2002
 22 out of 37 found this review helpful

Despite the title, this book contains very little botany and almost everything is a history of animals' relationship with plants and how humans affected certain plants rather than the other way around. The text focuses on four plants (apple trees, tulips, marijuana plants, and potatoes) which gives the author little opportunity to explore the affect of plants on the rest of the world. I would have preferred the author turned the subject around to show major ways that plants affect the world with many different plant examples for each effect.

The author mostly rambles through loosely related anecdotes that stand on their own and might do better as short stories in magazines or the Sunday edition of the paper. His central premise---that plants purposedly affect the world---is almost completely abandoned after a few pages. Indeed, most of the stories show man's breeding of plants for specific characteristics rather than the other way around. The anecdotes are more about the author's activities while researching the book than the topic itself, and he comes across as a rube most of the time. Although that may appeal to some readers, I felt misled by the advertising and title.

Some of the histories are interesting, but are poorly supported which creates the tone of a high school book report rather than a story written by someone with a command of the subject. The reader would be better off reading separate books on the history of each of the four plants. A good editor could cut two-thirds of this book and still keep all of the good stuff, although he would change the title to not mislead the reader.

In all, the premise is a wonderful idea, but the book is poorly executed.


Reworked 'Selfish-gene' theory   January 1, 2005
 22 out of 55 found this review helpful

This book came to me highly recommended, and the title has some sizzle. Unfortunately, it wasn't the sort of meditation on botany that I enjoy. Despite my reaction, it is obviously satisfying many readers. I find this more interesting than the text.

My problems begin on paragraph 3:
"A bumblebee would probably consider himself as a subject in the garden and the bloom he's plundering for its drop of nectar as an object. But we know that this is just a failure of his imagination. The truth of the matter is that the flower has cleverly manipulated the bee into hauling its pollen from blossom to blossom."

This is a twist on Dawkins' famous 'selfish gene' argument. Dawkins argues that you and I represent vehicles our genes have created to insure their 'survival'. Our genes have provided us with plenty of mindless passions which insure the gene's survival, not ours. We, the vehicles, emerge, reproduce and die. The genetic matter is passed on from generation to generation. The gene is immortal.

When Pollan elevates the flower to 'conscious subject', capable of tricking the bumblebee into heavy labor, he does for the flower what Dawkins did for the gene. The site of conscious control transfers from the active to the passive, from the traditional to the surprising, from you and I to 'it'. This metaphorical trick uses a familiar metaphorical allusion which suggests 'consciousness' has physical location, and within that location resides a 'little man' (much like you or I), who watches something of a TV show presented by the senses, before deciding what actions to take.

For idol worshipers, like the ancient Greeks, the 'little man' Dionysus might reside in the statue. For Descartes, the 'little man' was in the pineal gland. For Mary Shelly, he was in the brain Dr. Frankenstein stitched into the monster's head. For Dawkins he is in the gene. For Pollan, he is in the flower. The common thread here is the shift of responsibility from 'me' to the 'little man'. It is comforting, as long as we don't look too closely at the notion. When we look closely, the little man argument becomes silly. A 'little man' must have his own 'little man', which in turn must have his own 'little man', ad infinitum. Nothing about the nature of responsibility is addressed.

Pollan follows this format. We are told about the powerful genetic (little man) creativity of the original apple grove in Kazakhstan. We are informed of Johnny Appleseed's link to the Dionysian god-head. We learn about profiteer efforts to contain the life force (little men) of tulips of fixed shape, size and color. The `little men' in marijuana plants allow their growers to out-fox the government agents. So, Pollan is really doing nothing but offering comforting nostrums and hoping no one looks very closely.