Planting the World: Joseph Banks and his Collectors: An Adventurous History of Botany
Written by Jordan Goodman
Narrated by Paul Hilliar
()
About this audiobook
‘Based on meticulous research in original sources … Goodman illustrates vividly how adept [Banks] was … Shining a light on individuals whose achievements are relatively uncelebrated’
Jenny Uglow, New York Review of Books
A bold new history of how botany and global plant collecting – centred at Kew Gardens and driven by Joseph Banks – transformed the earth.
Botany was the darling and the powerhouse of the eighteenth century. As European ships ventured across the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans, discovery bloomed. Bounties of new plants were brought back, and their arrival meant much more than improved flowerbeds – it offered a new scientific frontier that would transform Europe’s industry, medicine, eating and drinking habits, and even fashion.
Joseph Banks was the dynamo for this momentous change. As botanist for James Cook’s great voyage to the South Pacific on the Endeavour, Banks collected plants on a vast scale, armed with the vision – as a child of the Enlightenment – that to travel physically was to advance intellectually. His thinking was as intrepid as Cook’s seafaring: he commissioned radically influential and physically daring expeditions such as those of Francis Masson to the Cape Colony, George Staunton to China, George Caley to Australia, William Bligh to Tahiti and Jamaica, among many others.
Jordan Goodman’s epic history follows these high seas adventurers and their influence in Europe, as well as taking us back to the early years of Kew Gardens, which Banks developed devotedly across the course of his life, transforming it into one of the world’s largest and most diverse botanical gardens.
In a rip-roaring global expedition, based on original sources in many languages, Goodman gives a momentous history of how the discoveries made by Banks and his collectors advanced scientific understanding around the world.
Related to Planting the World
Related audiobooks
The Seashell on the Mountaintop: A Story of Science, Sainthood, and the Humble Genius who Discovered a New History of the Earth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Environmental Movement: Protecting Our Natural Resources Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Lives of Weeds: Opportunism, Resistance, Folly Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Tree Story: The History of the World Written in Rings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In Defense of Plants: An Exploration into the Wonder of Plants Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Show Me the Honey: Adventures of an Accidental Apiarist Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Making Eden: How Plants Transformed a Barren Planet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gods, Wasps and Stranglers: The Secret History and Redemptive Future of Fig Trees Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Nature of Plants: An Introduction to How Plants Work Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Trees of Power: Ten Essential Arboreal Allies Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Our Native Bees: North America's Endangered Pollinators and the Fight to Save Them Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rose Gardening: A Beginners Starters Guide to Growing Roses Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Nature Underfoot: Living with Beetles, Crabgrass, Fruit Flies, and Other Tiny Life Around Us Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Spineless Wonders: Strange Tales from the Invertebrate World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Reason for Flowers: Their History, Culture, Biology, and How They Change Our Lives Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants, Updated and Expanded Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Seaweed Chronicles: A World at the Water's Edge Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Why Peacocks?: An Unlikely Search for Meaning in the World's Most Magnificent Bird Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flower Diary: In Which Mary Hiester Reid Paints, Travels, Marries & Opens a Door Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTeaching the Trees: Lessons from the Forest Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Brilliant Green: The Surprising History and Science of Plant Intelligence Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5By Any Other Name: A Cultural History of the Rose Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Invasive Aliens: The Plants and Animals From Over There That Are Over Here Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Pleasures of the Garden Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bringing Back the Beaver: The Story of One Man's Quest to Rewild Britain's Waterways Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Mason Bee Revolution: How the Hardest Working Bee can Save the World – One Backyard at a Time Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Protecting Pollinators: How to Save the Creatures that Feed Our World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Orchard: A Year in England’s Eden Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
History For You
Swingtime for Hitler: Goebbels’s Jazzmen, Tokyo Rose, and Propaganda That Carries a Tune Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Leave the World Behind: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Demon Copperhead: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Small Mercies: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Overstory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/577 Days of February: Living and Dying in Ukraine, Told by the Nation’s Own Journalists Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All the Sinners Bleed: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel: Genius, Power, and Deception on the Eve of World War I Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Razorblade Tears: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Mary Magdalene: Women, the Church, and the Great Deception Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An American Marriage: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cuba (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize): An American History Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Lafayette in the Somewhat United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Story of Art Without Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Secret History of the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hell's Princess: The Mystery of Belle Gunness, Butcher of Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Five Rings Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Related categories
Reviews for Planting the World
0 ratings0 reviews