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 is a biologist acclaimed for his lyrical explorations of the living world. His books have twice been finalists for Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction, in 2012 for The Forest Unseen and in 2022 for Sounds Wild and Broken. His 2017 book, The Songs of Trees won the John Burroughs Medal. Other literary honors include an Award in Literature from American Academy of Arts and Letters, two-time finalist for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, and winner of the Acoustical Society of America's Science Communication Award, the National Academies' Best Book Award, Iris Book Award, Reed Environmental Writing Award, and National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History Literature. He is a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, a Guggenheim Fellow, and is Adjunct Professor of Environmental Sciences at Emory University. He was previously William R. Kenan Jr. Professor at the University of the South in Sewanee, TN. Haskell lives in Atlanta, Georgia.