Jim Endersby

Orchid

A Cultural History

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Some flowers make us think of love or heaven, of political causes or drug cravings, while others are food, medicine, or decoration; almost every plant that humans have ever taken an interest in has acquired a rich web of associations. So it is not surprising that flowers as alluring as orchids are associated with a very specific set of images, ideas, and symbols. Yet the precise significances we attach to orchids may be, Jim Endersby argues, the weirdest ever to have become linked to a plant. By following orchids through history, Endersby discovers unexpected connections that lead us into myriad other histories. Everything from the European conquest of the Americas to Charles Darwin s theory of evolution became intimately entangled with the story of the orchid. Whether it s in films, novels, plays, or poems, orchids feature everywhere from Shakespeare to science fiction, from hard-boiled thrillers to elaborate modernist novels. Orchid: A Cultural History tells, for the first time, the full story of our fascination with orchids. "

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Grolier Club
• Seitenzahl: 288
• Erscheinungstermin: 7. November 2016
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 223mm x 161mm x 30mm
• Gewicht: 623g
• ISBN-13: 9780226376325
• ISBN-10: 022637632X
• Artikelnr.: 44675596

Autorenporträt

Jim Endersby is a reader in the history of science at the University of Sussex. He is the author of A Guinea Pig's History of Biology and Imperial Nature: Joseph Hooker and the Practices of Victorian Science.