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Summary: Brilliant!
Review: When recommending this book, my friend said "Read the first sentence: then try to put to down and walk away." It was impossible. It was also impossible not to buy copies for all my friends. "Orchid Fever" spotlights the intersection set of orchid maniacs (self-confession here), marketplace economics, and intra-government regulatory idiocy (CITES). It's wonderful what the human race can accomplish when all of our best and basest instincts converge on an object of desire. Eric Hansen has captured it brilliantly. And I suspect he drinks a lot of coffee.
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Summary: Mystery, Environmentalism, Plant Lore--A Wonderful Combo
Review: I just finished Orchid Fever last night and I have only one criticism--I wanted it to be longer! I wanted to savor the book over several days, but I found myself unable to put it down. The descriptions are wonderful and the writing lean and masterful. Also, the environmental issues Hansen raises are compelling, so he's done a great service. I also particularly enjoyed the "lunacy" of the orchid folks he described, and as a plant lover I identify with their passion. I've kept my plant habit down to a small townhouse garden but after reading Hansen's book I'm feeling drawn helplessly toward...Paphiopedilums..... Thanks, Eric Hansen, for a wonderful contribution to literature, environmentalism and plant lore!
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Summary: Orchid Fever is Infectious!!!
Review: This book should carry an advisory warning - "Set aside the time because once you start reading you won't be able to put it down!" Hansen's style, his insane sense of humor e.g. the parenthetical pronunciation of Kucukonderuzunkoluk as "Kucukonderuzunkoluk," and his ability to make what would have been boring treatises of rudimentary knowledge into exciting adventures of learning leave the reader spellbound. Hansen weaves Orchids 101 with a tale stranger than fiction of a world I didn't even know existed; intrigue and politics and sheer lunacy, and believe it or not folks, it's all about orchids. Very well done.
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Summary: Lust and Lunacy: that's putting it mildly
Review: Eric Hansen's book is absolutely intriguing. Hansen spent years tracking down people who are crazy about orchids, interviewing them, and researching complex interactions between institutions that supposedly conserve and breed orchids, and -- of all things -- smugglers. I couldn't put the book down, nor did I want to when I came to the end. What impressed me the most about Hansen's book is the skillful and sympathetic way in which he evoked these passionate people and their nutty but richly meaningful world. I suspect human society is more full of devotion and near-insanity than we generally realize, but rarely can a writer bring it out in the way Hansen has done. From the orchid-collecting thug in Borneo (who sends his hit man after anyone who steals his pollinia) to the French teenager raising orchids with new and disturbingly powerful pesticides to the elderly woman in Seattle entranced by her sexy paphiopedilum -- this is better than any fiction I've read for a long time, and it's all true.
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Summary: Orchids "007" Style
Review: I was browsing at Amazon, not long ago, looking for a how-to-grow orchid book as a gift for my sister-in-law who lives in Hawaii. I stumbled on "Orchid Fever" by accident and what a lucky find it was. Who would dream that a book about flowers could be so thrilling, inspiring, funny, and educational, or one that would cause me to perch on the edge of my seat in disbelief? Who knew that in Turkey, orchids are cultivated to make ice cream? Or that orchids can be entered into competitions just for their perfume? Hansen explores the world of orchids. He discusses by turns their history, trade, conservation, black market, and their seductive allure for people all over the world. Orchid characteristics are discussed in detail, and Hansen travels widely to understand the orchids' culture and market. Both hobby and commercial growers are interviewed and quoted extensively to help the reader understand why people devote not only much time and energy but sometimes endanger themselves in order to cultivate this unusual flower. If I could have changed one thing about this book, I would have included color pictures of many of the orchids Hansen describes. I am tantalized by the descriptions of these flowers, and now I feel compelled to get another orchid book just to see what they look like in color. "Orchid Fever" is not only a thrilling story, but it is a beautifully written book, one that I will be sending shortly to three book-loving friends who are *extremely* hard to please. I have a house full of both four-legged animals, aquariums, and houseplants, but I've never tried growing any orchids. Unfortunately, I think I've caught the "fever"....
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Summary: Catch the fever!
Review: Eric Hansen's Orchid Fever is a highly entertaining and enjoyable book. I mean, how often does a character fall dead from a tree in the jungle trying desperately to view a precious orchid in the first paragraph of a book? I was instantly hooked by the sheer wackiness of such a beginning! Eric's book (somehow I feel I am allowed to refer to him on a first-name basis after reading his warm, crazy tales) is delightfully refreshing and humorous. I highly recommend his book to anyone who has ever been the slightest bit intrigued by the mystery and beauty of orchids. Eric trapses after all sort of real life "orchid characters" and makes you feel a bit dull that you don't have such an insane passion yourself. Having said that I guess my own attachment to the book is related to my personal passion for chocolate - a single passion bonds all passionnate people together, no matter what they're passionnate about. If you appreciate the extreme characters in this world, if you've ever been passionnate about anything that others couldn't understand and/or if appreciate a dry sense of humor, this book is for you. Enough said - enjoy!
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Summary: Mega WOWs
Review: Just finished the book - what a trip! I can only imagine the stories that weren't put in the book. While I was content with cymbidiums, dendrobiums and a few other wonderful babies - now I truly want a Chinese cymbidium. What an amazing journey - I had no idea - I was just loving and appreciating my babies - after reading Orchid Fever, I'm more discerning, protective and in awe of these beautiful plants/flowers. Imagine, now I'm part of an international madness from which there is no cure. My garden will never be the same!
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Summary: Orchid Fever: Wow! What a Book!
Review: OK, let's cut to the pursuit: Once you start this book, you may not want to put it down. (Eric Hansen knows how to grab you from the first line.) Once you finish it, you may find yourself wondering when's the next installment. Why not? You've been reading about obsessions--beauty, perfection, power, some odd kind of eminent domain, and all in the name of plants, by God!--why shouldn't you have acquired something of a taste for this stuff? Welcome to the world of orchid culture--part botany, part mythology, part geopolitics, and part ineffable passion. Here you enter the heart of mystery: How can a plant--albeit one that, as the saying might go, has more varieties than Carter has liver pills--which takes seven years to go from seed to first flower so completely enthrall the world? Sure, Hansen helps disabuse us of our myopic orchid-as-corsage nostalgia. We're as surprised as he is to learn that orchids are "also used in the making of foods, clothing, paint pigments, medicines, pig feed, religious charms, lubricants, adhesives, musical instruments, packaging, cosmetics, perfumes, and food flavorings (the vanilla bean)." And who among us wouldn't be just as willing and eager as he is to go halfway around the world to sample "fox testicle ice cream" (best eaten with a knife and fork)? Don't get the connection? All I'll tell you is, it's got to do with this amazing and unbelievable flower. The description also holds for the people Hansen knows or meets, from Borneo to Paris. As much as the book reads like a well-written spy thriller--crisp, yet breezy--let's face it, true is deeply stranger than fiction. The most normal of these people is, well, odd. Maybe a better word is "singular". Enough of them to like, dislike, and maybe just wonder, not too sure about. Part-travelogue, part-whodunit, spattered with history and horticulture and investigative journalism (and that half "60 Minutes"/half-Geraldo), this book is--what else?--JUST PLAIN FUN! Pluck it!
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Summary: Botanical Cravings
Review: Orchid Fever reinvents horticultural non-fiction with its sensual imagery and thrilling accounts of real-life adventures in the mad, mad world of orchid fanaticism. From the very first sentence, I was hooked and could hardly stand to put this book down until I had found out what exactly was meant by each of the tantalizing chapter names. Hansen has a way of bringing surprising sex appeal and glamour to a subject that most would have treated with far less inspiration.
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Summary: Eric Hansen Has Given The World Orchid Fever
Review: I haven't been able to do anything but read this riviting tale of orchid politics, bizarre obsessions,eccentric characters, and vivid descriptions of orchid sexual fantasy for the last two days. My husband is blind and I have had to read various chapters to him so that he can enjoy this exotic riotous tour of the orchid world with me. This is storytelling at it's best! Karen Murphy-Hall and Ellis Hall
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