| 商家名称 |
信用等级 |
购买信息 |
订购本书 |
|
|
 |
Flower Confidential: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful in the Business of Flo |
 |
|
|
Flower Confidential: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful in the Business of Flo |
|
基本信息·出版社：Algonquin Books
·页码：306 页
·出版日期：2007年01月
·ISBN：1565124383
·International Standard Book Number：1565124383
·条形码：9781565124387
·EAN：9781565124387
·装帧：精装
·正文语种：英语
内容简介 We buy more flowers a year than we do Big Macs, spending $6.2 billion annually. We use them to mark our most important events, to express sentiments that might otherwise go unsaid. And we demand perfection. So it’s no surprise that there is a $40 billion global industry devoted to making flowers flawless.
Amy Stewart takes us inside the flower trade—from the hybridizers, who create new varieties in the laboratory, to the growers, who produce flowers by the millions (often in a factory-like setting), to the Dutch auctioneers, who set the bar (and the price), and ultimately to the neighborhood florists orchestrating the mind-boggling demands of Valentine’s and Mother’s Day. There’s the breeder intent on developing the first blue rose; an eccentric horticultural legend who created the world’s most popular lily; a grower of gerberas of every color imaginable; and the equivalent of a Tiffany diamond: the “ Forever Young” rose.
Stewart explores the relevance of flowers in our lives and in our history, and in the process she reveals all that has been gained—and lost—by tinkering with nature.
作者简介 Amy Stewart is the author of
The Earth Moved, which won the 2005 California Horticultural Society’s Writer’s Award, and
From the Ground Up. Her essays and commentaries have appeared in the
New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Garden Design, Organic Gardening, and elsewhere. She has been featured on
NPR, Good Morning America, and
CBS Sunday Morning. She lectures throughout the country and lives in Eureka, California. Author Web site: www.amystewart.com
媒体推荐 "
Flower Confidential attains the uncommon rank of a non-fiction book that is equally as rewarding to the reader for its storytelling as it is for its content. Even if you're not into flowers, it's fascinating to see how a major industry is built around such a short-lived, aesthetic luxury."
—
USA Today (
USA Today )
"A new book every flower lover should read. . . . Amy is one of my favorite garden writers and not just because we're in sync about our craft. . . . She gives lessons in botany and big business, history and horticulture. She enlightens and entertains; she poses questions and offers opinions. And she does it with style."
—
Newsday (
Newsday )
"Stewart is a fine interviewer and historian, and she does a superb job with this hardcover scoop on 'the good, the bad, and the beautiful in the business of flowers.' Well-researched details about the cut-flower trade draw you in, and her writing style and character development make the book as good a choice for vacation reading as a novel."
—
Washington Post (
The Washington Post )
"Stewart's journey takes us down many such paths, all connected by her own curiosity and highly readable prose. The greatest value of
Flower Confidential, however, is that it was written at all."
—the
Washington Post (
The Washington Post )
A new book every flower lover should read. . . . Amy is one of my favorite garden writers and not just because we're in sync about our craft. . . . She gives lessons in botany and big business, history and horticulture. She enlightens and entertains; she poses questions and offers opinions. And she does it with style. Newsday (
Newsday )
Flower Confidential attains the uncommon rank of a non-fiction book that is equally as rewarding to the reader for its storytelling as it is for its content. Even if you're not into flowers, it's fascinating to see how a major industry is built around such a short-lived, aesthetic luxury. USA Today
Stewart is a fine interviewer and historian, and she does a superb job with this hardcover scoop on 'the good, the bad, and the beautiful in the business of flowers.' Well-researched details about the cut-flower trade draw you in, and her writing style and character development make the book as good a choice for vacation reading as a novel. Washington Post (
The Washington Post )
Stewart's journey takes us down many such paths, all connected by her own curiosity and highly readable prose. The greatest value of Flower Confidential, however, is that it was written at all. the Washington Post (
The Washington Post )
Stewart, an avid gardener and winner of the 2005 California Horticultural Society's Writer's Award for her book The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms, now tackles the global flower industry. Her investigations take her from an eccentric lily breeder to an Australian business with the alchemical mission of creating a blue rose. She visits a romantically anachronistic violet grower, the largest remaining California grower of cut flowers and a Dutch breeder employing high-tech methods to develop flowers in equatorial countries where wages are low. Stewart follows a rose from the remote Ecuadoran greenhouse where it's grown to the American retailer where it's finally sold, and visits a huge, stock –exchange–like Dutch flower auction. These present-day adventures are interspersed with fascinating histories of the various aspects of flower culture, propagation and commerce. Stewart's floral romanticism-she admits early on that she's "always had a generalized, smutty sort of lust for flowers"-survives the potentially disillusioning revelations of the flower biz, though her passion only falters a few times, as when she witnesses roses being dipped in fungicide in preparation for export. By the end, this book is as lush as the flowers it describes. (
Publishers Weekly )
Stewart, an avid gardener and winner of the 2005 California Horticultural Society's Writer's Award for her book The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms, now tackles the global flower industry. Her investigations take her from an eccentric lily breeder to an Australian business with the alchemical mission of creating a blue rose. She visits a romantically anachronistic violet grower, the largest remaining California grower of cut flowers and a Dutch breeder employing high-tech methods to develop flowers in equatorial countries where wages are low. Stewart follows a rose from the remote Ecuadoran greenhouse where it's grown to the American retailer where it's finally sold, and visits a huge, stock exchangelike Dutch flower auction. These present-day adventures are interspersed with fascinating histories of the various aspects of flower culture, propagation and commerce. Stewart's floral romanticism-she admits early on that she's always had a generalized, smutty sort of lust for flowers-survives the potentially disillusioning revelations of the flower biz, though her passion only falters a few times, as when she witnesses roses being dipped in fungicide in preparation for export. By the end, this book is as lush as the flowers it describes. (
Publishers Weekly )
专业书评 From Publishers WeeklyStewart, an avid gardener and winner of the 2005 California Horticultural Society's Writer's Award for her book
The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms, now tackles the global flower industry. Her investigations take her from an eccentric lily breeder to an Australian business with the alchemical mission of creating a blue rose. She visits a romantically anachronistic violet grower, the largest remaining California grower of cut flowers and a Dutch breeder employing high-tech methods to develop flowers in equatorial countries where wages are low. Stewart follows a rose from the remote Ecuadoran greenhouse where it's grown to the American retailer where it's finally sold, and visits a huge, stock –exchange–like Dutch flower auction. These present-day adventures are interspersed with fascinating histories of the various aspects of flower culture, propagation and commerce. Stewart's floral romanticism—she admits early on that she's "always had a generalized, smutty sort of lust for flowers"—survives the potentially disillusioning revelations of the flower biz, though her passion only falters a few times, as when she witnesses roses being dipped in fungicide in preparation for export. By the end, this book is as lush as the flowers it describes.
(Feb.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
目录 Contents
Introduction 1
Part 1 Breeding 1 The Birds, the Bees, and a Camel Hair Brush 15
2 Engineered to Perfection 40
Part 2 Growing 3 Italian Violets and Japanese Chrysanthemums 61
4 Acres under Glass 77
5 How the Dutch Conquered the World 106
6 Flowers on the Equator 137
Part 3 Selling 7 Forbidden Flowers 173
8 The Dutch Auction 209
9 Florists, Supermarkets, and the Next Big Thing 237
Epilogue: Valentine’s Day 271 The Care and Feeding of Cut Flowers 283
Visiting Markets and Growers 285
Statistics 289
Notes 293
Selected Bibliography 303
……
文摘 What's the first thing a person does when you hand them flowers?" Bob Otsuka, general manager of the San Francisco Flower Mart, asked me. To answer his own question, he pantomimed the gesture people make, bringing his hands to his face and breathing deeply. "
They smell them," he said.
I sniffed the air, trying to catch the fragrance of rose or lily. Nothing. Sixty vendors sell cut flowers and plants out of this warehouse off Market Street, and as Bob and I walked the concrete floor a little after 5 a.m. neither one of us could find a blossom with a scent. "
These flowers have all been bred for the industry," Bob said. "They're selecting for color and size, and most of all for durability. You make some trade-offs when you do that. One of the things these flowers lose is scent."
"But you know what?" he said as we continued down the hall past carts loaded with buckets of hydrangeas and sunflowers. "People still want to believe that flowers smell good. I've seen somebody put their face right into a bunch of 'Leonidas' and say, 'Oh, they smell wonderful.' But I know that rose. It's got gold petals with coppery edges -- you know the one I mean? It was bred for fall weddings. And it doesn't have any fragrance at all."
He shook his head, laughing, and I followed him down to the end of the hall, where he thought we might find some lilies that still had scent.
The first thing you notice about a flower market is how out of place it seems in a big city. Even in San Francisco, a sunny, breezy, metropolis where people are not shy about wearing flowers in their hair or anyplace else, the idea of a flower market is not in keeping with the grime and grit of urban life. Unlike the fishing industry, which has found a way to operate within the theme park environment of Fisherman's Wharf, the flower trade is tucked away from the public eye in a warehouse district along the freeway. The market i
……
