A Cultural History of Plants (6-Volume Set)

About this book

A Cultural History of Plants presents a global exploration of how plants have shaped human culture. Covering the last 12,000 years, it is the definitive history of how we have cultivated, traded, classified, and altered plants and how, in turn, plants have influenced our ideas of luxury and wealth, health and well-being, art and architecture.

Chapter titles are identical across each of the volumes. This gives the choice of reading about a specific period in one of the volumes, or following a theme across history by reading the relevant chapter in each of the six. The themes (and chapter titles) are: Plants as Staple Foods; Plants as Luxury Foods; Trade and Exploration; Plant Technology and Science; Plants and Medicine; Plants in Culture; Plants as Natural Ornaments; The Representation of Plants. The six volumes cover: 1 – Antiquity (10,000 BCE to 500 CE); 2 – Post-Classical Era (500 to 1400); 3 – Early Modern Era (1400 to 1650); 4 – the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1650 to 1800); 5 – the Nineteenth Century (1800 to 1920); 6 – Modern Era (1920 to the present). The page extent for the pack is 1465 pages. Each volume opens with notes on contributors and an introduction and concludes with notes, bibliography, and an index.

Contents

Volume 1: A Cultural History of Plants in Antiquity / Edited by Annette Giesecke (University of Delaware, USA)
Volume 2: A Cultural History of Plants in the Post-Classical Era / Edited by Alain Touwaide (Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions, Washington, D.C., USA)
Volume 3: A Cultural History of Plants in the Early Modern Era / Edited by Andrew Dalby (independent scholar, France) & Annette Giesecke (University of Delaware, USA)
Volume 4: A Cultural History of Plants in the Seventeenth and Eighteeneth Centuries / Edited by Jennifer Milam (University of Sydney, Australia)
Volume 5: A Cultural History of Plants in the Nineteenth Century / Edited by David Mabberley (University of Oxford, UK)
Volume 6: A Cultural History of Plants in the Modern Era / Edited by Stephen Forbes (Adelaide Botanic Gardens, Australia)

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Biography

Annette Giesecke, PhD, is a specialist in the history, meaning, and representation of ancient gardens and designed landscapes at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

David Mabberley is a botanist and author based in Australia. He is Emeritus Fellow, Wadham College, University of Oxford and Adjunct Professor in Macquarie University and he has also taught in the USA.