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Book Summary and Reviews of The Cabaret of Plants by Richard Mabey

The Cabaret of Plants by Richard Mabey

The Cabaret of Plants

Forty Thousand Years of Plant Life and the Human Imagination

by Richard Mabey

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  • Published:
  • Jan 2016, 400 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

The crowning achievement of "Britain's foremost nature writer" (New York Times) - a globe-trotting exploration of botany and human experience.

The Cabaret of Plants is a rich, sweeping work of botanical history by the illustrious naturalist Richard Mabey. Plants have been central to human experience not just as sources of food and medicine but also as objects of worship, actors in creation myths, and symbols of war and peace and of life and death. Mabey explores forty different plant species, taking readers from the Himalayas to Madagascar to the Amazon to our own backyards. Through the work of the likes of da Vinci, Wordsworth, Darwin, and van Gogh, Mabey recounts how papyrus changed communication, how the olive branch came to represent peace, and how the lotus flower is influencing new technology. Here too are the stories of our abiding love of and dependence on acorns, daffodils, cocoa beans, and orchids. The Cabaret of Plants is the magnum opus of one of our great naturalists and a masterful exploration of the complex relationship between humans and the natural world. 35 color illustrations

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. An unusual and vastly entertaining journey into the world of mysterious plant life as experienced by a gifted nature writer." - Kirkus

"Mabey is delightfully eclectic in his approach, often touching on those species with which he has a personal connection, but he consistently advances his central theme while providing interesting insights and opinions." - Publishers Weekly

"I've been trying to read this for two weeks and I'm not even halfway through - it's making my eyes glaze over." - BookBrowse

This information about The Cabaret of Plants was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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