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Synopsis
Featuring many stunning illustrations from the Kew archives, Orchid: A Cultural History tells, for the first time, the extraordinary story of orchids and our prolific interest in them.
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About the Author
Jim Endersby is senior lecturer in the history of science at the University of Sussex. His first book, A Guinea Pig's History of Biology (Harvard, 2007), won the Royal Society of Literature's Jerwood Prize and was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. His previous book with Chicago, Imperial Nature: Joseph Hooker and the Practices of Victorian Science (2008), was shortlisted for the HSSSuzanne J. Levinson Prize. His broadcast Crafty Orchids was aired on BBC Radio 4 in January 2016.
Review
“Weaves a clever course between science and fiction. . . . Endersby has provided an engrossing series of stories, engagingly told.” (Times Literary Supplement)
"Few orchid books are as fascinating as this. Endersby explores the grip of these exotic flowers on the human imagination, reflected in literature from antiquity. Their beauty has appealed to a gamut of emotions – romance, lust, avarice, jealousy – and no other plant family has become so deeply embedded in fiction and poetry. Melding art and science, this original title reminds us that the destruction of biodiversity also inflicts damage on our shared culture, a fundamental attribute of human existence." (BBC Wildlife)
"Lively, gripping." (Sunday Times)
"Traces the story of our fascination with these elegant flowers." (Daily Mail)
"Orchid: A Cultural History explores the associations that have endowed this flower with significance, and describes how the orchid’s identity has run the gamut from romance and seduction to decadence and cunning. Endersby understands the importance of making science accessible to a general audience, and in Orchid he initially grabs readers' attention by emphasizing the plant's historic identity as an aphrodisiac." (The Weekly Standard)
"In his book Orchid: a Cultural History, Jim Endersby explains how people ate orchid roots in a dish, ground them up and drank them in wine or goat's milk — to incite lust or suppress it; to have male children or female children or none at all. In ancient Thessaly, they were rumoured to use orchid roots to both cure and cause venereal disease. Pity the poor orchid for being so misunderstood! There are still orchids blooming on the shores of the Mediterranean, and if you look at what they're doing, a separate, intricate world is revealed. The flowers are advertising sex alright — just not with us in mind!" (CBC Radio)
“Featuring many gorgeous illustrations from the collection of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Orchid: A Cultural History tells, for the first time, the extraordinary story of orchids and our prolific interest in them. It is an enchanting tale not only for gardeners and plant collectors, but anyone curious about the flower’s obsessive hold on the imagination in history, cinema, literature, and more.” (Pollinia)
“An orchid thriller. Orchids are beautiful, strange, savage, sexy, mysterious, luxurious and expensive rarities. From H. G. Wells to Susan Orlean, and even James Bond movies, orchids turn up everywhere. Explorers have died searching for new orchids in faraway steamy jungles. Endersby traces the history of our scientific understanding of orchids, and their culture, from the Greeks to present orchid enthusiasts. You won’t be able to put down this lavishly illustrated and fascinating book.” (Stephen Buchmann, author of The Reason for Flowers)
“Endersby has written an engaging and enlightening account of one of the Earth's most mythologized botanical wonders.” (Richard Conniff, author of House of Lost Worlds)
“Endersby will convince you that the only things odder than orchid flowers are the minds of male humans. Although botanists, horticulturists and Charles Darwin blew away thousands of years of whacky folklore their facts were twisted, influencing many movies, detective novels and science fiction stories. The Victorian ‘Language of Flowers’ should be revised for the turn of the century until orchids become symbols of words like ‘Contradiction’ and ‘Suspicion’.” (Peter Bernhardt, author of Darwin’s Orchids: Then and Now)
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- PublisherRoyal Botanic Gardens
- Publication date2017
- ISBN 10 1842466291
- ISBN 13 9781842466292
- BindingHardcover
- LanguageEnglish
- Number of pages288
- Rating
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Orchid
Seller: GF Books, Inc., Hawthorne, CA, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Condition: Good. Book is in Used-Good condition. Pages and cover are clean and intact. Used items may not include supplementary materials such as CDs or access codes. May show signs of minor shelf wear and contain limited notes and highlighting. 1.37. Seller Inventory # 1842466291-2-4
Quantity: 1 available