The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World

　　久居城市的人們厭倦城市的喧鬧，對人工的製成物深感不耐，但另一方面，舒服的鞋子穿久了，精緻的食物吃多了，生活的便利享受慣了，都市人早已失去在自然之中謀生的能力，同時，讀慣了大眾媒體浮面的報導，對於科學界建構起來的一套深澀龐大的知識體系，都市人也無福消受。

　　於是，以文學筆法消化科學知識，佐以個人體驗的自然寫作應運而生，《慾望植物園》的作者波倫與《感官之旅》的艾克曼可謂個中翹楚。

　　波倫以蘋果、鬱金香、大麻、馬鈴薯分別對應到四種人的慾望，以蘋果來訴說人對甜美的慾望，而蘋果這個植物也因著人對味覺的嗜慾，四處栽種，大大改變了自然界的植物生態。

　　鬱金香特殊的美感令人為之癡迷，甚至到了以等重的黃金來換取一顆球莖的地步，也在十七世紀的荷蘭引發了球莖價格崩盤的金融風暴，有如高到極點頹然而崩的哥德式教堂。

　　馬鈴薯沒有華美的外貌，但是它在十九世紀的歉收，造成愛爾蘭的大飢荒，促成愛爾蘭移民潮，而今天，生物科技的發展應用在馬鈴薯上，也同樣代表了人類控制自然的慾望。

　　大麻，代表了人類對於遺忘與迷離快感的欲求，人似乎等不及在死後才得見天堂的美妙，而耽溺於大麻的使用，在那個片刻，天堂在眼前展開，世界的醜惡盡皆遺忘……。

★本書中譯本《慾望植物園》由時報出版

＂Pollan shines a light on our own nature as well as on our implication in the natural world.＂ --The New York Times

＂A wry, informed pastoral.＂ --The New Yorker

The book that helped make Michael Pollan, the New York Times bestselling author of How to Change Your Mind, Cooked and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, one of the most trusted food experts in America

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. InThe Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan ingeniously demonstrates how people and domesticated plants have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship. He masterfully links four fundamental human desires--sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control--with the plants that satisfy them: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. In telling the stories of four familiar species, Pollan illustrates how the plants have evolved to satisfy humankind’s most basic yearnings. And just as we’ve benefited from these plants, we have also done well by them. So who is really domesticating whom?

作者簡介

麥可．波倫Michael Pollan

　　《紐約時報雜誌》長期撰稿人，目前在柏克萊大學教授媒體新聞學；著有《Second Nature》、《A Place of My Own》，以及讓他成為《紐約時報》年度風雲暢銷作者的《慾望植物園》（The Botany of Desire）；此書亦獲選為邊境（Borders）、亞馬遜（Amazon）以及美國書商協會（ American Booksellers Association）等書店年度最佳好書。波倫現與畫家妻子朱蒂絲．貝澤（Judith Belzer）以及他們的兒子以撒同住於舊金山灣區。關於波倫其他著作，可以參考作者網站www.michaelpollan.com。

Michael Pollan is the author of seven books, including Cooked: The Natural History of Transformation, Food Rules, In Defense of Food, and The Omnivore’s Dilemma. A longtime contributor to The New York Times, he is also the Knight Professor of Science and Environmental Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2010, Time magazine named him one of the one hundred most influential people in the world.