The Fruit Hunters: A Story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce, and ObsessionDelicious, lethal, hallucinogenic and medicinal, fruits have led nations to war, fueled dictatorships and lured people into new worlds. An expedition through the fascinating world of fruit, The Fruit Hunters is the engrossing story of some of Earth's most desired foods. In lustrous prose, Adam Leith Gollner draws readers into a Willy Wonka-like world with mangoes that taste like piña coladas, orange cloudberries, peanut butter fruits and the miracle fruit that turns everything sour to sweet, making lemons taste like lemonade. Peopled with a cast of characters as varied and bizarre as the fruit -- smugglers, inventors, explorers and epicures -- this extraordinary book unveils the mysterious universe of fruit, from the jungles of Borneo to the prized orchards of Florida's fruit hunters to American supermarkets. Gollner examines the fruits we eat and explains why we eat them (the scientific, economic and aesthetic reasons); traces the life of mass-produced fruits (how they are created, grown and marketed) and explores the underworld of fruits that are inaccessible, ignored and even forbidden in the Western world. An intrepid journalist and keen observer of nature -- both human and botanical -- Adam Leith Gollner has written a vivid tale of horticultural obsession. |
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LibraryThing Review
User Review - satyridae - LibraryThingThere's a lot of fascinating information in this wildly discursive book. There's also a fair bit of meandering and repetition, which knocked my rating down some. It's worth a look but might be better skimmed than read. Read full review
THE FRUIT HUNTERS: A Story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce, and Obsession
User Review - KirkusAdmitting that he has gone "off the deep end trying to get to the core," Gourmet and Bon Appetit contributor Gollner offers an informative, enlightening account of fruits and their role in human life ... Read full review
Other editions - View all
The Fruit Hunters: A Story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce and Obsession Adam Gollner Limited preview - 2010 |
The Fruit Hunters: A Story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce and Obsession Adam Leith Gollner No preview available - 2008 |
Common terms and phrases
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Popular passages
Page 69 - Yet nature is made better by no mean But nature makes that mean : so, over that art Which you say adds to nature, is an art That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry A gentler scion to the wildest stock, And make conceive a bark of baser kind By bud of nobler race : this is an art Which does mend nature, change it rather, but The art itself is nature.
Page 30 - He kissed the plump mellow yellow smellow melons of her rump, on each plump melonous hemisphere, in their mellow yellow furrow, with obscure prolonged provocative melonsmellonous osculation.
Page 83 - The greatest service which can be rendered any country is, to add a useful plant to its culture, especially a bread grain ; next in value to bread is oil.
Page 51 - He who owns a rood of proper land in this country, and, in the face of all the pomonal riches of the day, only raises crabs and choke-pears, deserves to lose the respect of all sensible men. The classical antiquarian must pardon one for doubting if, amid all the •wonderful beauty of the golden age, there was anything to equal our delicious modern fruits— our honied Seckels, and Beurres, our melting Rareripes.
Page 125 - ... them from using those measures in a way that unjustifiably restricts trade. The primary goal of the SPS Agreement is to limit the use of any measures that may restrict trade to those that are justified to provide the necessary level of health protection. It recognizes the right of Member...
Page 142 - Left to herself in the concrete cell which she called her apartment, Aimee fell victim to all the devils of doubt. She switched on her radio; a mindless storm of Teutonic passion possessed her and drove her to the cliff-edge of frenzy; then abruptly stopped. 'This rendition comes to you by courtesy of Kaiser's Stoneless Peaches. Remember no other peach now marketed is perfect and completely stoneless. When you buy Kaiser's Stoneless Peach you are buying full weight of succulent peach flesh and nothing...
Page 44 - The word, however, pleases me. To me it suggests something altogether different: it evokes "concern"; it evokes the care one takes for what exists and could exist; a readiness to find strange and singular what surrounds us; a certain relentlessness to break up our familiarities and to regard otherwise the same things...
Page 97 - Why should we plant, when there are so many mongongo nuts in the world?
Page 52 - All three were put on my father's plate, and before the anguished eyes of his children, he poured on cream, which was almost unprocurable, and sugar, which was heavily rationed, and ate all three.
Bibliographic information
| Title | The Fruit Hunters: A Story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce, and Obsession |
| Author | Adam Leith Gollner |
| Edition | reprint |
| Publisher | Simon and Schuster, 2008 |
| ISBN | 1416565612, 9781416565611 |
| Length | 288 pages |
| Subjects | › › Business & Economics / Industries / Agribusiness Cooking / Specific Ingredients / Fruit Science / Life Sciences / Botany |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |