The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World is altogether an extraordinary book. Take a step backwards and see the world from the point of view of the planet’s most successful plants. The potato, the tulip, the apple and the cannabis plant.

In this 2001 nonfiction book by journalist Michael Pollan, he presents case studies that mirror four types of human desires that are reflected in the way that we selectively grow, breed, and genetically engineer our plants. The tulip, beauty; marijuana, intoxication; the apple, sweetness; and the potato, control.

The stories range from the true story of Johnny Appleseed to Pollan’s first-hand research with sophisticated marijuana hybrids in Amsterdam to the paradigm-shifting possibilities of genetically engineered potatoes. Pollan also discusses the limitations of monoculture agriculture: specifically, the adoption in Ireland of a single breed of potato (the Irish Lumper) made the Irish vulnerable to a fungus to which it had no resistance, resulting in the Irish Potato Famine. The Peruvians from whom the Irish had gotten the potato grew hundreds of varieties, so their exposure to any given pest was slight.

The book was used as the basis for The Botany of Desire, a two-hour program broadcast by PBS

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