A review by goldandsalt
The Brother Gardeners: Botany, Empire and the Birth of an Obsession by Andrea Wulf

1.0

I thought this would be a way to learn about colonialism and gardening, two of my strong but mostly separate interests. I figured I might get some foundational knowledge about the history of garden design, and also learn about the colonial history of some plants that I'd previously taken for granted. It did offer some of that, but it became too tiresome to wade through the uncritical hero-worship of these white men enriching themselves while they argued over how to categorize plant specimens from the colonized world with total disregard to the indigenous peoples who surely had long relationships to and deep knowledge of the plants in question.

I understood going in that I would be reading between the lines, but it just became too much and I couldn't be bothered to finish it.