Planting the World: Joseph Banks and His Collectors: an Adventurous History of Botany

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Jordan Goodman

Planting the World

Joseph Banks and His Collectors: an Adventurous History of Botany

Jordan Goodman

$59.99

Hardback

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English

William Collins
02 September 2020

Biography: science, technology & engineering; History: specific events & topics; Mathematics & Sciences; History of science; Botany & plant sciences; Geographical discovery & exploration

‘Based on meticulous research in original sources … Goodman illustrates vividly how adept [Banks] was … Shining a light on individuals whose achievements are relatively uncelebrated’ Jenny Uglow, New York Review of Books

A bold new history of how botany and global plant collecting – centred at Kew Gardens and driven by Joseph Banks – transformed the earth.

Botany was the darling and the powerhouse of the eighteenth century. As European ships ventured across the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans, discovery bloomed. Bounties of new plants were brought back, and their arrival meant much more than improved flowerbeds – it offered a new scientific frontier that would transform Europe’s industry, medicine, eating and drinking habits, and even fashion.

Joseph Banks was the dynamo for this momentous change. As botanist for James Cook’s great voyage to the South Pacific on the Endeavour, Banks collected plants on a vast scale, armed with the vision – as a child of the Enlightenment – that to travel physically was to advance intellectually. His thinking was as intrepid as Cook’s seafaring: he commissioned radically influential and physically daring expeditions such as those of Francis Masson to the Cape Colony, George Staunton to China, George Caley to Australia, William Bligh to Tahiti and Jamaica, among many others.

Jordan Goodman’s epic history follows these high seas adventurers and their influence in Europe, as well as taking us back to the early years of Kew Gardens, which Banks developed devotedly across the course of his life, transforming it into one of the world’s largest and most diverse botanical gardens.

In a rip-roaring global expedition, based on original sources in many languages, Goodman gives a momentous history of how the discoveries made by Banks and his collectors advanced scientific understanding around the world.

By: Jordan Goodman
Imprint: William Collins
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 240mm, Width: 159mm, Spine: 49mm
Weight: 840g
ISBN: 9780007578832
ISBN 10: 0007578830
Pages: 560
Publication Date: 02 September 2020
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Jordan Goodman is Honorary Research Associate, Department of Science and Technology Studies, University College London.He is the author of The Rattlesnake: A Voyage of Discovery to the Coral Sea (Faber), The Devil and Mr Casement (Verso / FSG) and Paul Robeson: A Watched Man. He has published extensively on the history of medicine and science, and cultural and economic history.

Reviews for Planting the World: Joseph Banks and His Collectors: an Adventurous History of Botany

PRAISE FOR JORDAN GOODMAN 'Invaluable... Goodman conjures the creak of the mast as canvas strained to breaking point, the seething scrabble of decks alive with cockroaches, and the thrill of a sparkling tropical sea after months of privation.' The Times 'Jordan Goodman has produced an account which will be invaluable to future historians of the period.' Daily Telegraph 'Goodman's account of the painstaking, dangerous soundings, calculations and surveying operation carried out aboard a ship that might run aground at any moment is gripping stuff... [his] account is so tense it reads more like something from a thriller than a history.' Literary Review