"I find this book to be an inspiration--a great capacity for wonder, an inherent moral sense, and a gentleness of spirit all forming genius."
-- Richard Ford

This book is as crisp as an October apple, as juicy as an August tomato, as long-awaited as the first flower of spring. Michael Pollan has conceived a new and powerful understanding of who we are, and how we stand in relation to everything else--and the stories he tells to prove the point make the world seem a richer place
-- Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature

"Like Tracy Kidder, Michael Pollan is a writer to immerse oneself in. He's informed and amusing, with a natural sort of voice that spools on inventively beyond expectations into a controlled but productive and intriguing obsessiveness (whether on Johnny Appleseed or marijuana). A Fine book."
-- Edward Hoagland, author of Compass Points

"Michael Pollan is a sensualist and a wonderful, funny storyteller. He is so engaging that his profound environmental messages are effortlessly communicated. He makes you fall in love with Nature."
-- Alice Waters, author of Chez Panisse Cafe Cookbook

"We can be grateful indeed that one of our wittiest writers about nature is also one of our wisest. Pollan makes a persuasive case that the plants we might be tempted to see as having been most domesticated by humanity are in fact also those that have been most effective in domesticating us. It is a stunning insight, and no one will come away from this book without having their ideas of nature stretched and challenged."
-- William Cronon, author of Nature's Metropolis

"Not since Jonathan Weiner's The Beak of the Finch have I been held so spellbound by a book. Using only four plants, The Botany of Desire succeeds in illuminating the radiant force of evolution. Remarkable."
-- Daniel J. Hinkley, author of The Explorer's Garden