How Flowers Made Our World - by David George Haskell (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

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 world-changing power. Inspired by the most up-to-date scientific research, David George Haskell observes, smells, and studies flowers such as magnolias, orchids, and roses, as well as fascinating but less well-known flowers such as seagrasses, to show us what we've been missing.

Flowers are beautiful revolutionaries. When they evolved, they remade the natural world: They used beauty to transform former enemies into cooperative partners. They reinvented plant growth, sex, and motherhood. Through radical genetic flexibility, they turned past environmental upheavals into opportunities for renewal. This inventiveness allowed them to build and sustain rain forests, savannahs, prairies, and even ocean shores.

Without flowers, human beings would not exist. We are a floral species, dependent on flowers for food and our habitats, as well as using flowers for beauty, scent, and culturally important rituals. Looking to the future, flowers offer us lessons on resilience and creativity in the face of rapid environmental change. How Flowers Made Our World combines lyrical writing, sensual exploration, and scientific expertise 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.

About the Author

David George Haskell's work integrates scientific, literary, and contemplative studies of the natural world. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, and formerly William R. Kenan professor of biology and environmental studies at the University of the South. His most recent work, Sounds Wild and Broken, was a Finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize and the 2023 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, and won the Acoustical Society of America's 2023 Science Communication Award. His previous book, The Songs of Trees, won the John Burroughs Medal for Distinguished Natural History Writing, and his first 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.