{ "item_title" : "How Flowers Made Our World", "item_author" : [" David George Haskell "], "item_description" : "An exquisite exploration of the power of flowers, placing them at the center of the story of how evolution created the world we know today We live on a floral planet, yet flowers don't get the credit they deserve. We admire them for their aesthetics, not their world-changing power. Inspired by the most up-to-date scientific research, David George Haskell observes, smells, and studies flowers such as magnolias, orchids, and roses, as well as fascinating but less well-known flowers such as seagrasses, to show us what we've been missing. Flowers are beautiful revolutionaries. When they evolved, they remade the natural world: They used beauty to transform former enemies into cooperative partners. They reinvented plant growth, sex, and motherhood. Through radical genetic flexibility, they turned past environmental upheavals into opportunities for renewal. This inventiveness allowed them to build and sustain rain forests, savannahs, prairies, and even ocean shores. Without flowers, human beings would not exist. We are a floral species, dependent on flowers for food and our habitats, as well as using flowers for beauty, scent, and culturally important rituals. Looking to the future, flowers offer us lessons on resilience and creativity in the face of rapid environmental change. How Flowers Made Our World combines lyrical writing, sensual exploration, and scientific expertise to explore some of the most consequential life forms ever to have evolved, showing how our planet came to be and how it thrives today.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers2.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/0/59/383/496/0593834968_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "32.00", "online_price" : "32.00", "our_price" : "32.00", "club_price" : "32.00", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "32.00" } }

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Oh, flowers! So fragrant and beautiful, so inspirational to poets and painters—and, according to two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee David George Haskell, absolutely foundational to life on Earth. In his illuminating and entertaining How Flowers Made Our World: The Story of Nature’s Revolutionaries, the biologist and author combines meticulous, extensive research with irresistible enthusiasm to achieve his aim of “put[ting] flowers back where they belong, at the center of the story about how our world came to be.” In order to enhance our flower fluency, Haskell spotlights eight flowering plants (magnolias, goatsbeard, orchids, grass, seagrass, roses, tea and pansies) as he elucidates the ways in which flowers are evolutionary powerhouses that have had a vital, undeniable impact on the Earth’s past and present, and will similarly influence its future.

Read our interview with David George Haskell, author of 'How Flowers Made Our World.'

Each chapter is rife with fascinating information; for example, the goatsbeard is a “badass dandelion” known for chromosomal doubling that initially hitched a ride with Europeans as they colonized other lands, and is now present on every continent except Antarctica. There are 28,000 species of orchids, and some “have embraced illusion and thievery with gusto, parasitizing fungi and duping pollinators” to ensure their reproduction. Experiential research yields intriguing revelations: A visit to the Chelsea Flower show in London is “not so much a celebration of flowers as a showcase of what people have done to flowers” via selective breeding and pesticides, and an excursion to Blackness village on Scotland’s Firth of Forth estuary affirms that “The calmer waters and abundant growth of seagrass are like rainforest canopies, lush green homes for thousands of animal species.” Haskell’s chapter “Speculative Futures” considers flowering plants’ influence on Earth both hundreds and millions of years in the future; in “Invitations to Play with Flowers,” he offers suggestions for more fully engaging with flowering plants right now. Joining a community garden, pressing flowers, making perfume, keeping a flower diary—all of these endeavors will “help flowers do what they do best: create connections that stir creativity.” After all, Haskell writes with conviction and joy, “A planet in bloom is a planet in full voice.”