A review by uderecife
The Cabaret of Plants: Forty Thousand Years of Plant Life and the Human Imagination by Richard Mabey

3.0

This book covers a very interesting, though not much explored, subject of the history of how humanity came to perceive plants and their roles. This, in some sense, is a history of botany, but taken in a much broader sense of how societies understand plants.

As the subtitle suggests, the book focus on the human perspective of plants, with many tales of discoveries and fascinations, fads, and the personalities behind such events. If you read it expecting to have plants as the main characters, this will be disappointed. But that you probably know. If this is a book about the forty thousand years of plant life and the human imagination, it comes with little surprise that this will focus on the human dealings with plants.

If you like plants; and if you like to discover how humans have changed their perceptions about these fascinating yet so strange living things, this book will definitely entertain you as well as enlighten you on this subject.