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Fruits of Eden: David Fairchild and America's Plant Hunters Kindle Edition

by Amanda Harris (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 37 ratings
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At the turn of the nineteenth century—when most food in America was bland and brown and few people appreciated the economic potential of then-exotic foods—David Fairchild convinced the U.S. Department of Agriculture to finance overseas explorations to find and bring back foreign cultivars. Fairchild traveled to remote corners of the globe, searching for fruits, vegetables, and grains that could find a new home in American fields and in the American diet.

In Fruits of Eden, Amanda Harris vividly recounts the exploits of Fairchild and his small band of adventurers and botanists as they traversed distant lands—Algeria, Baghdad, Cape Town, Hong Kong, Java, and Zanzibar—to return with new and exciting flavors. Their expeditions led to a renaissance not only at the dinner table but also in horticulture, providing diversity of crops for farmers across the country.

Not everyone was supportive, however. The scientific community was concerned with invasive species, and World War I fanned the flames of xenophobia in Washington. Adversaries who believed Fairchild’s discoveries would contaminate the purity of native crops eventually shut down his program, but his legacy lives on in today’s modern kitchen, where navel oranges, Meyer lemons, honeydew melons, soybeans, and durum wheat are now standard.

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  1. Print length
    313 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    University Press of Florida
  5. Publication date
    April 28, 2015
  6. File size
    4137 KB
  7. Page Flip
    Enabled
  8. Word Wise
    Enabled
  9. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Harris has penned a charming tale of the intertwined lives of the men who, in the early 20th century, brought the American public a variety of new foods that have since enriched American diets and dining experiences.”—CHOICE


“A warmly engaging look at a group of scientists and travelers who reached out to experience the wider world and sought to share it with their fellow citizens.” —Agricultural History Society
 

About the Author

Amanda Harris is a former editor and reporter for Newsday, the daily newspaper of Long Island. She has written for the Boston Record-American/Herald Traveler and [MORE], the journalism review.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00US73NBS
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ University Press of Florida (April 28, 2015)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 28, 2015
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 4137 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 313 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 37 ratings

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
37 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

G. L. Pedersen
5.0 out of 5 stars An adventure like no other
Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2020
Verified Purchase
I love tropical plants and Florida books, and wanted to learn more about David Fairchild. I never expected to be taken on such a grand journey as this! A cast of characters come to life - the plant hunters - and David Fairchild is the charmed ringleader. I enjoyed every minute of the read, imagining the amazing places and people they met, knowing the world they explored no longer exists. I spent many wonderful days at Fairchild Gardens, with my mother playing the role of plant hunter - secretly tucking palm seeds in her pockets and purse, and planting and nurturing them till they were towering palm trees. That spirit of discovery and adventure is so well captured in this book.
One person found this helpful
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bcat
5.0 out of 5 stars Great!
Reviewed in the United States on March 4, 2016
Verified Purchase
Fascinating book about early plant hunters. It teaches you where so much of our food has come from and the struggles to get people to try.
2 people found this helpful
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J. barry
3.0 out of 5 stars pretty good
Reviewed in the United States on June 24, 2015
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nothing really new.pretty good
One person found this helpful
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Gordon Kennedy
5.0 out of 5 stars Forage
Reviewed in the United States on May 26, 2016
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Fantastic book, great deal. Thanks !
One person found this helpful
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Cookie
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on June 13, 2016
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I loved it!!
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Mamina
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2016
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Absolutely fantastic reading!
One person found this helpful
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Bob Keeler
5.0 out of 5 stars Great scholarship, graceful writing, an unusual story
Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2015
The old saying about not being able to tell a book by its cover really applies to this impeccably researched, gracefully written work by Amanda Harris. What I mean is that I have an unfair bias against university press books. I tend to file them in my mind under this category: scholarly, but written in dusty language, suitable for curing insomnia. This book is exactly the opposite.
Amanda Harris is a journalist of distinction. (Disclosure: I know that because we were colleagues for years at Newsday.) So she knows how to write sentences that make you want to read the next one, and the next one, and the next one. Beyond that, she displayed in this book the spectacularly long attention span that good research requires. The breadth of her study and reading is truly impressive.
The characters, drawn in almost novelistic colors, draw you into the story—a story you probably had never thought about until you have read this book. David Fairchild, her primary subject, is the plant-hunter-in-chief. He did America a great service by turning the attention of the Department of Agriculture to plants flourishing outside the United States, plants that could bring new tastes and textures to the tables of Americans. Do you, for example, like guacamole? Thank Fairchild and his fellow plant-hunters for finding a hardy and useful strain of avocado.
But Fairchild is hardly the only character. His adventures begin with his chance encounter with Barbour Lathrop, a rich man who liked to travel and to search the world for new plants. The book also documents Fairchild’s marriage to Marian Bell, daughter of the great inventor Alexander Graham Bell, who turned out to be a key supporter of Fairchild’s work. It includes vivid portraits of others who took up Fairchild’s globe-circling campaign of exploration, as his colleagues and employees.
Fruits of Eden also recounts bureaucratic skirmishes within the Department of Agriculture, where Charles Lester Marlatt viewed plants coming from abroad as enemies, threatening the survival of those already flourishing in America. You might think that the internal workings of bureaucracies are invariably dull. Not in this book. The struggle between the adventurous spirit of Fairchild and the fears of Marlatt and his allies is the stuff of real drama.
To my surprise, the book also explores a truly nasty episode in American history: the eugenics movement. That horrific idea began with the desire for improving plants by breeding, based on the genetic findings of a monk named Gregor Mendel. But it morphed into an effort to use science to produce a better strain of homo sapiens. The chapter that describes this movement is aptly called “Better Babies.” One of its central figures was Harry Laughlin of the ominously named Eugenics Record Office in Cold Spring Harbor, New York. I first learned about Laughlin in an American Heritage piece by my friend Peter Quinn, a glorious writer with a historian’s skills. Looking at Amanda’s sources, I noticed that she included Peter’s work—a good example of her scholarship. The saddest part of the eugenics story is that the Nazis learned this from us, then took the drive for better babies many terrifying steps further, into racial purity and mass murder.

In short, this is an excellent work of journalism, history and science. Please read it.
10 people found this helpful
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Anthony Mancini
5.0 out of 5 stars Amanda Harris Fashions A Necklace of Gems
Reviewed in the United States on May 29, 2015
I just read "Fruits of Eden". Amanda Harris has done something remarkable -- told an untold story with grace and clarity. And what a gallery of intriguing characters she introduces to readers! I am happy to have experienced vicariously their adventures by the medium of her pen. At the book launch she read an interesting excerpt about Cannibal Island. She could just as easily have chosen the gripping account of Selfridge's death as the first victim of an airplane crash or many other sections. The book is a necklace of little gems. I loved the little asides about dove trees that people are urged to plant for their grandchildren, Frank Meyer's flea-infested bed of bricks and others. Charming. The book deserves a wide readership. I hope she gets it.
Anthony Mancini, novelist.
4 people found this helpful
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