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    The Cabaret of Plants: Forty Thousand Years of Plant Life and the Human Imagination
    The Cabaret of Plants: Forty Thousand Years of Plant Life and the Human Imagination
    The Cabaret of Plants: Forty Thousand Years of Plant Life and the Human Imagination
    Audiobook11 hours

    The Cabaret of Plants: Forty Thousand Years of Plant Life and the Human Imagination

    Written by Richard Mabey

    Narrated by Ralph Lister

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook


    A rich, sweeping, and compelling work of botanical history, The Cabaret of Plants explores dozens of plant species that for millennia have challenged our imaginations, awoken our wonder, and upturned our ideas about history, science, beauty, and belief. Going back to the beginnings of human history, Richard Mabey shows how flowers, trees, and plants have been central to human experience not just as sources of food and medicine but as objects of worship, actors in creation myths, and symbols of war and peace, life and death.



    Mabey takes listeners from the Himalayas to Madagascar to the Amazon to our own backyards. He ranges through the work of writers, artists, and scientists and across nearly 40,000 years of human history: Ice Age images of plant life in ancient cave art and the earliest representations of the Garden of Eden; Newton's apple and gravity, Priestley's sprig of mint and photosynthesis, and Wordsworth's daffodils; the history of cultivated plants such as maize, ginseng, and cotton; and the ways the sturdy oak became the symbol of British nationhood and the giant sequoia came to epitomize the spirit of America.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateApr 29, 2016
    ISBN9781515974093
    The Cabaret of Plants: Forty Thousand Years of Plant Life and the Human Imagination
    Author

    Richard Mabey

    Richard Mabey is one of our greatest nature writers. He is the author of some thirty books including the bestselling plant bible Flora Britannica, Food for Free, Turned Out Nice Again, Weeds: the Story of Outlaw Plants and Nature Cure which was shortlisted for the Whitbread, Ondaatje and Ackerley Awards. His biography, Gilbert White won the Whitbread Biography Award. A regular commentator on radio and in the national press, he was elected a Fellow in the Royal Society of Literature in 2012. He lives in Norfolk.

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    Reviews for The Cabaret of Plants

    4/5

    24 ratings4 reviews

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    • 1/5
      I guess it's great if you want a British history of botany. Only a British view.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      I picked this up on impulse because I want to learn more about nature and plants, and thought it might be a nice introduction to some of the more unusual plants out there. I did learn some very interesting things but I also found myself skimming some sections because they were quite dense or meandered from the main topic somewhat. I think this is better suited to someone who already knows a bit about plants and is interested in how they were discovered. I should probably find a more straightforward botany book instead!
    • 4/5
      Very entertaining mixture of scientific informaion and personal reminiscences. Manages not to spend too much time on some of the subjects of many pop-sci botany books (i.e., carnivorous plants). And what time Mabey does spend on those topics is presented through a cultural lens that makes the subject fresh.
      [Audiobook note: Ralph Lister is an excellent reader.]
    • 4/5
      placeholder- will write longer review later (probably tomorrow). Great use of language & history, but a wee bit sentimental