“Astonishing. . . Through deep research and lyrical prose, Haskell triumphantly recasts the role of flowers as foundational to humanity.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A fascinating examination of the enormous impact that flowering plants have had on all life.... Besides bringing beauty and joy into the world, flowers, Haskell asserts, can teach humans an important lesson: 'Thriving worlds grow from cooperation, mediated by beauty, with some illusion thrown in.' An edifying celebration.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“David George Haskell's great strength as a writer is that he is open to surprise. He regards the planet as a strange and beautiful place. How Flowers Made Our World is at once closely observed, richly reported, and mind-blowing.”—Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction
“'Who runs the world? Girls!' sang Beyonce a while back, but really it’s flowers and flowering plants that run this world and have for more than a hundred million years. In this vividly written book, David George Haskell shows how they do that, how flowering plants made the modern world from prairies and rainforests to bees and butterflies, how the most trivialized part of the natural world is among its most powerful and essential.”—Rebecca Solnit, author of Orwell's Roses
“A tender portrait of flowering plants as powerful agents of change. Flowers wield beauty as a world-making force, actively shaping the planet—and, by extension, us. This book is a joyful exhortation to floral reverence, and brims with curiosity, humor, and crystal-clear scientific delights. We are all more in sway of flowers than we think. Richly precise, How Flowers Made Our World is a celebration of the inventiveness of floral life.”—Zoë Schlanger, author of The Light Eaters
“In this dazzling book, scintillating with wonder and scholarship, Haskell shows us how flowers – so often belittled and misunderstood, have shaped ecology, and so shaped us. Flowers are tectonic, and here is a book worthy of them.”—Charles Foster, author of Being A Human
“Flowering plants as you've never seen them before: these flowers are the sneaky, sexy, volatile, opportunistic rebels of the vegetal world. They turned the planet on its head and, as David George Haskell demonstrates so masterfully, they have so much still to teach us. Science writing with sensuality, sensitivity and soul.”—Cal Flyn, author of Islands of Abandonment
