The Botany Of Desire: A Plant's-eye View Of The World

Every schoolchild learns about the mutually beneficial dance of honeybees and flowers: The bee collects nectar and pollen to make honey and, in the process, spreads the flowers ' genes far and wide. In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan ingeniously demonstrates how people and domesticated plants have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship. He masterfully links four fundamental human desires -- sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control -- with the plants that satisfy them: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. In telling the stories of four familiar species, Pollan illustrates how the plants have evolved to satisfy humankind ' s most basic yearnings. And just as we ' ve benefited from these plants, we have also done well by them. So who is really domesticating whom?