“The reason you and
billions of other people will eat today is a
century-long effort to increase the yield of
crop plants. Hybrid tells the story of the
quiet heroes behind this triumph. Noel
Kingsbury has written a fantastic history of
a subject that should become much better
known.”
.
Gregg Easterbrook
Author of Sonic Boom
“A magnificent
achievement—Kingsbury tells this gripping
story, with a large cast of characters
across the entire span of human
civilization, with wit, passion, and
erudition.”
.
Tim Richardson
Author of The Arcadian
Friends: Inventing the English Landscape
Garden
“Thoughtful, well
researched and refreshingly broad in scope,
Noel Kingsbury’s Hybrid took me out of my
immediate area of expertise (plants and
garden history) and opened my eyes to the
way previously unsung plant breeders have
transformed societies. It should be
essential reading for anyone wishing to take
an informed view on the future direction of
biotechnology.”
.
Jennifer Potter
Author of Strange
Blooms: The Curious Lives and Adventures of
the John Tradescants
“This unique book
is a veritable potpourri of information
about how and why people cultivate plants.
It is an engaging and eclectic mixture of
homely anecdote and clearly presented
scientific fact written in discursive style
that particularly suits the general reader.
Indeed, one of strengths of Hybrid is that
it can be opened and browsed at almost any
chapter without needing to read preceding
chapters. Kingsbury takes an accessible and
popular approach to agriculture and its
often fascinating personalities, but his
book also has something of a sting in its
tail. For it also gives us a very clear and
serious message that the scientific progress
that has allowed us to feed a rapidly
growing global population since the
nineteenth century is now threatened by
modern versions of obscurantist and
anti-science sentiment. Our civilization and
culture are built on agriculture, and in
these uncertain times of climate change and
increased pressure on food production, we
will need all the tools available just to
maintain supplies. Hybrid does a sterling
job of bringing these key issues to a wide
audience.”
.
Denis J. Murphy
Author of People,
Plants, and Genes: The Story of Crops and
Humanity
“In Hybrid we learn
that there was a green revolution in
eleventh century China when a visionary
emperor imported new strains of rice from
Indochina; how working men in
nineteenth-century Britain made a sport of
competitive gooseberry breeding, and how a
German doctor discovered hybrid vigor in
plants. Hybrid the book displays, like
hybrids themselves, all the marvelous fruit
of miscellany.”
.
Jonathan Silvertown
Author of An
Orchard Invisible: A Natural History of
Seeds
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