How Flowers Made Our World The Story of Nature's Revolutionaries

About this book

In How Flowers Made Our World, biologist David George Haskell redefines our understanding of flowers, casting them as powerful revolutionaries at the heart of Earth's story.

Far from being mere ornaments, flowers have shaped the very fabric of life on our planet. Their evolution triggered a cascade of biodiversity, transforming oceans, creating new habitats, and even altering the climate. Their beauty turned adversaries into allies, and their adaptability turned environmental upheavals into opportunities for renewal.

Weaving together vivid storytelling, lyrical writing, and cutting-edge science, Haskell illuminates flowers as portals into deep time and essential players in our ecological future. He reveals how flowers built and sustained ecosystems from rainforests to prairies and have been pivotal in the evolution of species like butterflies, bees, and birds. He also uncovers their crucial role in human history, as cultural emblems, keys to scientific leaps, and evolutionary catalysts, with flowering grasses calling our ancestors to leave the trees, laying the foundation for agriculture and modern civilization.

From lessons in resilience and creativity found among gardeners' favourites, such as magnolias, orchids, and roses, to rediscovering lesser-known wonders, like our uncelebrated underwater meadows that sustain life and the secrets of our most humble wildflowers, How Flowers Made Our World invites readers to see these blooms in a whole new light – as the dynamic and influential forces they truly are.

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Biography

David Haskell is a writer and biologist, adjunct professor of environmental sciences at Emory University and a Guggenheim Fellow. Known for his integration of science, lyrical writing and close observation of the living world, he has twice been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction, for The Forest Unseen and Sounds Wild and Broken. In 2024, the American Academy of Arts and Letters granted him an Award in Literature.