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The Garden of Invention |
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Luther Burbank and the Business of Breeding Plants
Jane S. Smith - Author
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| Book: Hardcover | 5.51 x 8.26in | 368 pages | ISBN 9781594202094 | 16 Apr 2009 | The Penguin Press | 18 - AND UP |
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A wide-ranging and delightful narrative history of the celebrated plant breeder Luther Burbank and the business of farm and garden in early twentieth-century America
A century ago, Luther Burbank was the most famous gardener on the planet. His name was inseparable from a cornucopia of new and improved plants—fruits, nuts, vegetables, and flowers—for both home gardens and commercial farms and orchards. At a time when the science of genetics was in its infancy and agriculture was often a perilous combination of guess work and luck, many people wanted a piece of the man they called the Wizard of Santa Rosa.
As the United States moved from a nation of farms to a nation of city dwellers, the people behind the new products that transformed daily life were admired with a fervor that is not accorded to their present-day counterparts. Everyone knew and marveled at Samuel Morse’s telegraph, Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone, and Thomas Edison’s electric light. And like these other great American inventors, Burbank was revered as an example of the best tradition of American originality, ingenuity, and perseverance. Burbank had learned the secret of teaching nature to perform for man, breeding and crossbreeding ordinary plants from farm and garden until they were tastier, hardier, and more productive than ever before.
The Garden of Invention is neither an encyclopedia nor a biography. Rather, Jane S. Smith, a noted cultural historian, highlights significant moments in Burbank’s life (itself a fascinating story) and uses them to explore larger trends that he embodied and, in some cases, shaped. The Garden of Invention revisits the early years of bioengineering, when plant inventors were popular heroes and the public clamored for new varieties that would extend seasons, increase yields, look beautiful, or simply be wonderfully different from anything seen before.
The road from the nineteenth-century farm to twenty-first-century agribusiness is full of twists and turns, of course, but a good part of it passed straight through Luther Burbank’s garden. The Garden of Invention is a colorful and engrossing examination of the intersection of gardening, science, and business in the years between the Civil War and the Great Depression.
"The Garden of Invention is a long overdue volume in food literature—a great story, well told."-Mark Kurlansky, the New York Times best-selling author of Cod and Salt
"Gardening, whether in a backyard plot or a hundred-acre orchard, is an audacious attempt to improve on nature, and Jane Smith’s fascinating hybrid of biography, history, and botany brings to life the most audacious of them all. In an age when we might be forgiven for thinking it takes millions of corporate dollars and genetic engineers to produce a new plant, The Garden of Invention reminds us how one man’s singular determination, patience, and brilliance can change the world. So put down that French fry (from a Burbank potato) and sample some of the delightful blooms in Smith’s Garden."—William Alexander, author of The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden
"Jane Smith has written a marvelous biography of Luther Burbank, an American folk hero, a botanical wizard and impresario of the garden, who spent his life wrestling nature into compliance with human will and desire. The Garden of Invention is a very human story of the boundless imagination and ambition that underlie the woes and wonders of agriculture today. Like Michael Pollan’s Botany of Desire or The Omnivore’s Dilemma, The Garden of Invention will fascinate anyone who eats."-Ruth Ozeki, author of All Over Creation and My Year of Meats
"In this lively and well-researched biography, Jane S. Smith has accorded a giant of American inventiveness the recognition he deserves. Thanks to this pioneering study of a horticultural genius, Luther Burbank of Santa Rosa, California can now take his place alongside Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and the other entrepreneur-inventors of his era."-Kevin Starr, University of Southern California, author of Americans and the Californian Dream
"Those who’ve hoed the archives hoping for a glimpse of the ever-mutating Luther Burbank will luxuriate in this magnificently researched—and juicy—account. From black-eyed marital assaults to systems of delayed orgasms, Smith reveals a shirt-ripping “Cosmist” whose devotion to the mysteries of nature yielded countless marvels."-Adam Leith Gollner, author of The Fruit Hunters
"Jane Smith couldn't be more timely. She resuscitates that ambiguous American original, Luther Burbank, the endlessly inventive seedsman who put genetics to work and started the never-ending race to breed larger, better, more commercial plants—today, a mixed blessing, the promise of bounty compromised by fear of scientific experiment. The Garden of Invention is an engrossing read on a very important subject."-Gina Mallet, author of Last Chance To Eat: The Fate of Taste in a Fast Food World
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