The Garden of Invention

Luther Burbank and the Business of Breeding Plants

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Last edited by ImportBot
May 15, 2024 | History

The Garden of Invention

Luther Burbank and the Business of Breeding Plants

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A wide-ranging and delightful narrative history of the celebrated plant breeder Luther Burbank and the business of farm and garden in early twentieth-century AmericaA century ago, Luther Burbank was the most famous gardener on the planet. His name was inseparable from a cornucopia of new and improved plantsfruits, nuts, vegetables, and flowersfor both home gardens and commercial farms and orchards. At a time when the science of genetics was in its infancy and agriculture was often a perilous combination of guess work and luck, many people wanted a piece of the man they called the Wizard of Santa Rosa.As the United States moved from a nation of farms to a nation of city dwellers, the people behind the new products that transformed daily life were admired with a fervor that is not accorded to their present-day counterparts. Everyone knew and marveled at Samuel Morses telegraph, Alexander Graham Bells telephone, and Thomas Edisons electric light. And like these other great American inventors, Burbank was revered as an example of the best tradition of American originality, ingenuity, and perseverance. Burbank had learned the secret of teaching nature to perform for man, breeding and crossbreeding ordinary plants from farm and garden until they were tastier, hardier, and more productive than ever before.The Garden of Invention is neither an encyclopedia nor a biography. Rather, Jane S. Smith, a noted cultural historian, highlights significant moments in Burbanks life (itself a fascinating story) and uses them to explore larger trends that he embodied and, in some cases, shaped. The Garden of Invention revisits the early years of bioengineering, when plant inventors were popular heroes and the public clamored for new varieties that would extend seasons, increase yields, look beautiful, or simply be wonderfully different from anything seen before.The road from the nineteenth-century farm to twenty-first-century agribusiness is full of twists and turns, of course, but a good part of it passed straight through Luther Burbanks garden. The Garden of Invention is a colorful and engrossing examination of the intersection of gardening, science, and business in the years between the Civil War and the Great Depression.

Publish Date
Pages
368

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Previews available in: English

Edition Availability
Cover of: The Garden of Invention
The Garden of Invention: Luther Burbank and the Business of Breeding Plants
February 23, 2010, Penguin (Non-Classics)
Paperback
Cover of: The Garden of Invention
The Garden of Invention
2009, Penguin USA, Inc.
Electronic resource in English
Cover of: The garden of invention

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Book Details


The Physical Object

Format
Paperback
Number of pages
368
Dimensions
8 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
Weight
10.6 ounces

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL24083802M
ISBN 10
0143116894
ISBN 13
9780143116899
OCLC/WorldCat
430052043

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History

Download catalog record: RDF / JSON / OPDS | Wikipedia citation
May 15, 2024 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
November 19, 2022 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
April 27, 2011 Edited by OCLC Bot Added OCLC numbers.
March 17, 2010 Edited by EdwardBot Added new cover
March 12, 2010 Created by ImportBot initial import