"In this entertaining young readers edition of the environmental studies classic, Michael Pollan demonstrates how people and domesticated plants have formed a reciprocal relationship. He links four fundamental human desires--sweetness, beauty, energy, and control--with the plants that satisfy them: the apple, the tulip, coffee, and the potato. In telling the stories of four familiar species, Pollan illustrates how the plants have evolved to satisfy...

Get the Summary of Michael Pollan's The Botany of Desire in 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book. Original book introduction: 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...

This book lets us peer into the world of microbes--not as germs to be eradicated, but as invaluable parts of our lives--allowing us to see how ubiquitous and vital microbes are: they sculpt our organs, defend us from disease, break down our food, educate our immune systems, guide our behavior, bombard our genomes with their genes, and grant us incredible abilities. While much of the prevailing discussion around the microbiome has focused on its implications...

"In the tradition of The Botany of Desire and Wicked Plants, the author of Paradise Under Glass gives us a witty and engaging history of the first botanists interwoven with stories of today's extraordinary plants found in the garden and the lab"--

"Humans have always had a special appreciation for fruit that grows on trees. Could it be because orchard fruits grow closer to heaven than other plant products do as some poets have suggested? Or could it be because the places where these fruits grow are alive with light and shadow and redolent of sweet scents, offering us sanctuaries where we can retreat from the cares of daily life? Where did the fruits we grow in orchards come from and how did...

"Acclaimed translators Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson offer this new rendition of Machado de Assis' classic novel. When the Collected Stories of Machado de Assis was published in 2018, it was hailed as a "literary event" by the LARB and as "landmark... heroically translated" by Benjamin Moser of The New Yorker. Now the "accomplished duo," (Sam Sacks, WSJ) returns with a fresh translation of Machado's definitive work, The Posthumous Memoirs...

Applying ecocritical theory to the work of Victorian writers, this collection explores what a diversity of ecocritical approaches can offer students and scholars of Victorian literature, at the same time that it critiques the general effectiveness of ecocritical theory. Interdisciplinary in their approach, the chapters take up questions related to the nonhuman, botany, landscape, evolutionary science, and religion. The contributors cast a wide net...