Rating: 
Summary: Soft-spoken, but packs a punch
Review: Pollan makes the rather striking point in the Introduction that we and our domesticated plants are involved in a coevolutionary relationship. We use them and they in turn use us. The bumblebee thinks that he is the "subject in the garden and the bloom he's plundering for its drop of nectar" is the 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." (p. xiv)And so it is with us. There is no subject and no object. The grammar is all wrong. We plant and disperse the apple, thinking we act from our volition, yet from the apple's point of view, it has enticed us through its bribe of sweetness to further its propagation. It has played upon our desire. The same can be said of every other plant "domesticated" by humans. As Pollan points out, from a larger point of view our farms and gardens are just another part of the "wild" environment. And we, too, are part of that environment--increasingly a most significant part. The plants, and of course the cows, the ants, the roaches, the dogs and the cats, adjust to the environment, or they don't. The ones that do will flourish. Those that don't, the mighty oak, perhaps, the hard wood trees of equatorial jungles, the tigers and the condor, that cannot, will go the way of the dodo. This idea is not original with Pollan, of course, but nowhere have I seen it presented so convincingly. In a sense we are not the doer, we are the done. Pollan illustrates his thesis in four chapters on the apple, the tulip, cannabis, and the potato. In the chapter on tulips and the tulip mania we learn that we are probably hard-wired to love flowers. Why? Because "the presence of flowers...is a reliable predictor of future food." (p. 68) We love what is good for us. We find beauty in that which nourishes. Pollan adds that "recognizing and recalling flowers helps a forager get to the fruit [that is to come] first." (p. 68) I might add that our love for little animals is both in their resemblance to our children and (hidden from our consciousness) their potential nutritional value in a time of famine. One might watch on PBS's Nature series to see how lovingly the big cat doth lick its prey. In the chapter on marijuana Pollan admits to growing the noxious weed in his garden among the potatoes andthe tulips, but incurs paranoia since such horticulture is against the law. He points with restraint to the absurdity of the anti-marijuana laws, to the unconstitutional seizure of property by the marijuana police, etc., but one senses that he's pulling his punches. Or perhaps he feels that something is gained by using a quiet voice. He goes to Amsterdam and finds out just how potent the new marijuana has become. He views an indoor marijuana grow room and sees how sinsemilla is produced while noting that cannabis has become America's number one cash crop. (p. 130). He also notes that "the rapid emergence of a domestic marijuana industry represents a triumph of protectionism" (p. 131). Yes, Virginia, the drug war is artificially supporting the high price of marijuana and protecting domestic "farmers" from foreign competition. The chapter on the apple concentrates on the life and career of John Chapman, AKA Johnny Appleseed, in which Pollan transforms the Disney-ish Christianized American folk hero into "the American Dionysus." The reason? The apple seeds that Chapman dispersed grew not into Red Delicious apples or Macintoshes but into scrawny little things, mostly too bitter to eat that were made into hard cider, which contained about three percent alcohol, the drink of default for the pioneers. They loved him for it, and occasionally there did indeed grow out of the cider orchards a tree or two that brought forth fruit that could be eaten with pleasure, and made into pies and butter.... The final chapter on the potato has Pollan planting Monsanto's genetically engineered NewLeaf potato, a potato that produces its own insecticide as part of the potato itself by using a gene borrowed from a common bacterium found in the soil. Pollan weighs the significance of this while recalling the history of the potato from its origins in the Andes through its economic effect on Europe, and especially Ireland, to its status today. He comes out strongly against monoculture and in favor of biodiversity. He reports on Monsanto's infamous "Terminator" technology, genetic alteration of plants so that their seeds are sterile, requiring the farmer to become dependent upon Monsanto for seed, a technology that Monsanto "has forsworn" following "an international barrage of criticism." (p. 233) This a very pretty book written in an understated style about how we deceive ourselves, how we fail to see the world as it really is; how we see the world from a singular and restricted point of view, we as subject and actor, the rest of the environment as acted upon, when in truth, we are just part of the larger ecology, part of the process. We are creatures that kid ourselves to make more palpable our morally ambiguous behavior. My favorite insight of many in the book comes from page 247 where Pollan, in recalling the brilliant time-lapse photography from David Attenborough's PBS series, "The Private Life of Plants," observes, "...our sense of plants as passive objects is a failure of imagination, rooted in the fact that plants occupy what amounts to a different dimension."
Rating: 
Summary: Clever book with caveats
Review: This is a generally well crafted, interesting and enjoyable book written for laymen. Mr. Pollan (what a marvelous name!) chose a clever concept to expound on - four diverse flowering plants (angiosperms) that have had a significant impact on humanity. The section on potatoes is particularly interesting for the historical information and the fascinating look into modern industrial agriculture and the biotechnology industry. The Nietzsche-inspired Apollo/Dionysus metaphor was belabored, and no mention was made of the Greek goddess Demeter. As she is the goddess of harvest, agriculture and fertility, this is an odd omission. Mr. Pollan used forty year old information in discussing the genesis of angiosperms. He cites Loren Eiseley's poetic but 1959 vintage work. The most recent scientific evidence has it that angiosperms arose in the early Cretaceous period during the Age of Dinosaurs (not Reptiles). Dinosaurs continued to exist and dominate the world for approximately another 90 million years. The angiosperms may have made possible the explosive radiation of large warm-blooded dinosaurs. That dinosaurs were and are (extant birds) warm blooded has been proven. Angiosperms did not cause the rise of mammals; a meteor that crash landed in the Yucatan has been credited for that.
Rating:
Summary: Great treatment - easy to read
Review: Wonderful book. Fun and easy to read. Best (non-how-to) book on plants and gardening written in quite a while. Anyone who loves gardening or likes to eat will like this book. It also provides the reader with the complexities of the issues involved with genetic engineering of our crops. I did get a bit tired of the constant comparison between Dionysus and Apollo-like thinking. Still it is highly recommended! I can't wait until it is out in paperback so I can afford to give copies to friends as gifts.
Rating: 
Summary: The sections about cannabis and the potato are best
Review: Pollan writes about the co-evolution of plants and humans. We think we may be manipulating plants by breeding and selecting for certain traits, but Pollan tries to make the point that these traits that so please humans are part of a very clever evolutionary strategy. Pollan looks at four plants: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. The sections about cannabis and the potato are best, as there is some interesting discussion about the nature of consciousness-altering chemicals and genetic engineering, respectively. In fact, the potato section is a nice companion to Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. Unfortunately, Pollan neither makes convincing arguments nor reveals anything extraordinary about our relationship with these plants. Too often, he digresses with philosophical talk about the difference between the worship of Dionysus and Apollo. If you're wondering what that has to do with plants, that's my point.
Rating:
Summary: Pollan should be named "Pollen"
Review: What John Chapman (a.k.a. Johnny Appleseed) did with a boatload of seed, Michael Pollan has done with a bookfull of provacative thoughts. He speaks of "meme" as a unit of memorable cultural change - his book takes us there. This is a very fast read, well written well and pulling the reader to the next page, the next section (there are four). It is also bravely written - addressing the "don't look, don't find" attitude that abounds in a society that takes things for granted. You will talk about this book and recommend it to others. I remember Michael Pollan as Michael "Pollen" because of his "seeding" impact to attitude and thought.
Rating:
Summary: Plants Modify Humans
Review: Michael Pollan likes bees, and mentions them frequently in _The Botany of Desire: A Plant's Eye View of the World_ (Random House). "A bumblebee would probably... regard 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." His thesis in his book is that plants have not manipulated just bees, but humans as well in the ten thousand years since agriculture started. If we have a success with a plant, it is just as true to say that the plant is having a success with us. We may have learned plenty, but the plants have learned as well: make a flashier flower, a tastier tuber and those humans will do just what you want. Pollan examines apples, tulips, marijuana, and potatoes and finds that we are serving them well.Apples we grow for sweetness, and sweetness surrounds our image of Johnny Appleseed, but Pollan shows that this strange character was not delivering apple orchards to the pioneers as much as he was delivering the alcoholic beverage cider, and incidentally he was making preserves of wild apple trees. Tulips we grow for beauty, and it is a beauty that has driven people wild. Pollan reviews the story of the Tulipomania of seventeenth century Holland, and shows that by what Darwin called "artificial selection," humans chose tulips that looked fancier, and tulips got fancier in order to be chosen. Marijuana we grow for intoxication, and Pollan admires what has happened with it: "_This_ was what the best gardeners of my generation had been doing all these years: they had been underground, perfecting cannabis." The government has boosted the potency of marijuana by forcing growing inside, where even carbon dioxide can be forced into the plants. The strangest and most troubling of the four stories is the potato, which we grow as a staple crop. Pollan got hold of the New Leaf potato from Monsanto, genetically engineered to have a toxin throughout the plant that kills beetles. The problem is that the toxin is behaving differently from natural toxins. Bees take it in pollen to other plants, and we know that monarch butterflies die when they eat milkweed dusted with pollen with the toxin in it; will this happen in the field? Pollan's potatoes grow into fine specimens, needing less worry and care than his other potatoes, but they fail as a harvest; he can't make himself eat them. Pollan is an avid gardener and writes about these plants, all of which he has himself raised at one time or other, with an enjoyable wit and clarity. There is plenty of science packed into his chapters, as well as amusing personal stories and cautionary tales. Most important, his lesson of how plants are not just objects for our manipulation but are linked in pushing us along as we push them provides a vital evolutionary lesson.
Rating:
Summary: Hope this wakes us all up!
Review: Pollan's book thrilled me with it's history of apples and humans, tulips and humans, and marijuana and humans; it has horrified and stunned me with its history of potatos and humans. I have never been so repulsed as when I read Pollan's description of what it was like for him to plant Monsanto's NewLeaf potato--their instructions on their bag of seed potatoes! I was truly shocked! They certainly do not feature those instructions in their many TV ads! If people really knew what this corporation was moving toward, they would rebel en mass. Instead, Monsanto fills TV commercials with syrupy ads trying to make biotechnology seem like a lifesaver. They neglect to say how all their food will come with those instructions not to copy (that is, not plant any seed from the new plants that will grow from this one-time authorization to plant under their license) on pain of breaking federal law. Food that can't be copied? Boy, if it makes people mad that they can't share a good computer disk with a friend, the way they can share a book, think how mad people would be if they knew eventually we won't be able to share the seeds of our food with ourselves or anyone else! This is really scary! Only if we all refuse to buy biotech food that contains intellectual property rights will we ever be able to keep alive at least the HOPE of being able to grow our own food year after year from our own seed if we ever need to. This book opened up my eyes. I knew biotechnology was iffy, and that there were concerns, but the bare, bald, cold financial intent to gain total control over our food supply so that we can never again choose the seeds from the food we eat and grow them on our own if we want, I hadn't realized. With the assistance of our government and intellectual property rights lawyers, their naked insult to our "non-corporate" individual/tribal/indigenous integrity is overwhelming to consider. And to think that the organic farmer is struggling, successfully, amid this horror but without the overwhelming support of all of us! If we were all just to give the organic experience the support it needs, the biotech food industry would surely fail in its attempt to remake our food into such a slavish and grotesque reality. This was an interesting book I originally bought for my son (the chapter on marijuana I knew he would like) but I happened to read it myself first and was awestruck with its information.
Rating:
Summary: A charming read.
Review: What do human's and bee's have in common? Do humans choose to plant potatoes or do potatoes attract humans like a flower lures bees? This engaging and highly original book challenges traditional views about humans and nature. Using the histories of apples, tulips, potatoes and cannabis to illustrate the complex relationships between humans and the natural world, the book shows how these species have successfully exploited human desires to flourish. The book explains that man and nature are and will always be "in this boat together" because humankind's nurturing over the last 10,000 years benefits as much from us as we do from them. A charming read. FinancialNeeds.com
Rating:
Summary: Good Pop Science
Review: Although this book deals with come scientific issues, it does so in a very accesible manner. The basic topics presented are how and why certain plants have been domesticated by man. The twist is that the why covers not only the why from the human point of view, but also that of the plants. As the book points out, not all plants are willing to be domesticated (the common example for this is the oak tree), but those that are have generally enjoyed an abundance unknown by other plants. Four case studies are presented, with each of them illustrating a different reason for man's domestication of plant species, and a particular species that represents this desire. I found the first (Desire: Sweetness;Species: Apple) and last (Desire:Control;Species: Potato) to be the most interesting in the book. The last one in particular raises some important issues and tough questions regarding genetically modified food.
Rating: 
Summary: Like candy, sweet without substance.
Review: Botany of Desire is to good evolutionary biology and natural history writing what Curious George is to Gorillas in the Mist. The stars Michael Pollan gets are for his lyrical writing, for making me think a little more deeply about a few plants for a couple of hours. He gets no stars for the natural history or for substance. This was an essentially substanceless book. A few funny anecdotes strung together without interior logic or any constancy of theme. What's his main thesis? He wants us to consider that plants evolved in order to attract our participation in their propogation. Well, that's pretty ho-hum since it's standard evolutionary theory. Of course, we as humans have a greater effect than the bees do, but the selfish plant gene is operating under the same restraints whether its seeking a human or an apian propogator. So, he has no truly novel concept to deliver. Nor is it novel to suggest that plants shaped human evolution. This reciprocity of effect is old news. Good natural history doesn't have to deliver something new. Many successful natural history books take solid, long-known ideas and put them across to the public in an effective, way. However, Pollan doesn't do that either. In fact, he merely collects a few observations, speculations and his own personal circumperambulations of, about and around a plant and tosses them into the hopper. His chapter on marijuana was so incoherant I began to think it was deliberate - an exemplar of marijuana's effect. This bricolage of a book is pretty to listen to, but lacking much of value to say. A bon bon, a froth and frosting, lacking any substance. In other words, Pollan doesn't have much to say, but he does say it rather well.
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