How Flowers Made Our World: The Story of Nature's Revolutionaries

How Flowers Made Our World: The Story of Nature's Revolutionaries - Hardcover

$32.00
$32.00
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How Flowers Made Our World: The Story of Nature's Revolutionaries
  • How Flowers Made Our World: The Story of Nature's Revolutionaries
How Flowers Made Our World: The Story of Nature's Revolutionaries - Hardcover

How Flowers Made Our World: The Story of Nature's Revolutionaries - Hardcover

by David George Haskell
$32.00
$32.00

Book Overview

"A work of real passion."--The New York Times

"A seamless melding of poetry and science."--Wall Street Journal

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 power. In this examination of the role flowers played in creating the world we know today, David George Haskell observes, smells, and studies flowers such as magnolias, orchids, and roses, as well as fascinating but less celebrated flowers such as seagrasses and tea to show us what we've been missing.

Flowers are beautiful revolutionaries. When they evolved, they remade the natural world: Gorgeous petals and alluring aromas transformed former enemies into cooperative partners. Flowers reinvented plant sexuality and motherhood, bringing male and female together in the same flower and amply provisioning seeds and fruits, innovations that also feed legions of animals, ourselves included. Through radical genetic flexibility, flowers turned past environmental upheavals into opportunities for renewal. This inventiveness allowed them to build and sustain rainforests, savannahs, prairies, and even ocean shores.

Without flowers, human beings would not exist. We are a floral species. Flowers catalyzed our evolution, and we now depend on them for food and a healthy planet. When we perfume ourselves, give a loved one a bouquet, or use blooms in gardens and religious ceremonies, we honor the special bond between people and flowers. The study of flowers also shaped modern science and horticulture in ways both marvelous and, sometimes, unjust.

Looking to the future, flowers offer us lessons on resilience and creativity in the face of rapid environmental change. We need floral creativity, beauty, and joy more than ever. How Flowers Made Our World combines lyrical writing, sensual exploration, and the latest in scientific research 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.
ISBN9780593834961
Author David George Haskell
PublisherViking
GenreHobbies & interests and Education
FormatHardcover
PublishedMarch 2026
LanguageENG- English
Pages352
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

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More by David George Haskell

Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution's Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction

Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution's Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction - Paperback

Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution's Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction - Paperback

By David George Haskell

About David George Haskell

David Haskell's work integrates scientific, literary, and contemplative studies of the natural world. He is a professor of biology and environmental studies at the University of the South and a Guggenheim Fellow. His 2017 book The Songs of Trees won the John Burroughs Medal for Distinguished Natural History Writing. His 2012 book The Forest Unseen was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, and won the 2013 Best Book Award from the National Academies, the National Outdoor Book Award, and the Reed Environmental Writing Award. His new book, Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution's Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction, will be published in March of 2022. To listen to a collection of sounds from the trees in this book, visit dghaskell.com.

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