A wonderful view, peppered with illustrations and sidebarred factoids, into a selected set of important plants in human history. The ordering is alphabetical by genus, so it starts off with the tequila-producing agave plant (which I was surprised to read in a side note that it is similar but "unrelated" (???) to aloe vera), and goes on to the (only 5,000 years old!!?) onion (Allium cepa).

An excellent book to have lying around the house. ( )

Randomly chosen plants. Random facts about each. Not very interesting. I read the German translation. ( )

Easy book to pick up and put down as none of the sections are more than 5 pages and there is no connection between each chapter. While I enjoyed each chapter there was no overarching layout of the chapters or justification of choice of plants. ( )

nicely done stories