Customer Reviews

Tulipomania : The Story of the World's Most Coveted Flower & the Extraordinary Passions It Aroused

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This is a fascinating view of the impact of trade on the development of culture, of the limitless capacity of humans to be petty and avaricious, of the naive and inventive efforts of gardeners who knew almost nothing about the biology of plants, and much, much more. Starting with the earliest interest in tulips in (and giving a wonderful overview of the cultural values of) ancient Turkey, the author tracks the rise in European interest, brings the tulip to the Netherlands, introduces us to the individual who all but invented gardening, explains how tulips evolved from intense red flowers to the brightly colored and varied forms they reached under Dutch cultivation, and shows how the social structure of the Netherlands (most particularly Amsterdam) set the stage for one of the great booms and busts in economic history. This ground-breaking work (no pun intended)explores this infamous event in new depth and reads like an adventure novel. Highly recommended to anyone who is interested in almost anything -- it's that eclectic in its narrative scope.

This book was a pleasure to read. It is beautifully written, well-researched and it grabs your attention right away and holds it until the very end. I think Mr. Dash realized that even though the book is relatively short, most people would have been bored if the book had only stayed with a narrow focus on tulip varieties and the economic dynamics of the brief period during which the mania flourished. The author made a wise choice by going off into little interesting peripheral areas, such as the origins of the tulip in central Asia, the cultivation of the flower by the Ottoman Turks, and some aspects of social life in 17th century Holland. Did you know that when the flower was popular in Turkey some of the Ottoman soldiers went around with tulips embroidered on their underwear? Due to the Islamic prohibition concerning the artistic depiction of people and real life objects the embroidery of the flower had to be kept "undercover", so they placed it on the underwear! I don't want to give the impression that the book is a bunch of fluff. Mr. Dash never veers too far from the tulip mania and some of the best chapters in the book concern the botanical, economic and social reasons for the stratospheric heights tulip prices reached. Due to the way tulips reproduce it took a long time for new varieties (which were the most coveted) to be produced in quantity. Trading methods that we use today, such as buying on margin and trading in futures, also helped to fuel the craze, as did the tendency of the people involved to do their trading in taverns while consuming vast quantities of beer! Oh, by the way, I do want to explain the title of this review: In 1562 a shipment of cloth which had been sent from Istanbul arrived in Antwerp. The Flemish merchant who had ordered the cloth also noticed that the shipment contained some type of bulbs. They were tulip bulbs, but the merchant didn't know that. He assumed they were some type of Turkish onion, so he had most of them roasted and he ate them for supper, seasoned with some oil and vinegar!

Mike Dash's "Tulipomania" is typical of the current crop of "popular" history books. Much like Dava Sobel's "Longitude", Mr. Dash takes a narrow topic/event and dissects it in great detail, while presenting his findings in a manner that is palatable to the academic and non-academic alike. The Dutch Tulip Craze of 1636-37 is one of the most overworked stories in the world of business, but Mr. Dash does well in interweaving his narrative of the Craze with anecdotal stories of the famous and common people whose lives were affected. The description of economic conditions and everyday life are rich and detailed. (Anyone in the brewing industry will salivate at the beer-consumption figures for Haarlem in 1636!) But the book does not get bogged down in detail and keeps a fast pace. Though not as strong as "Longitude", "Tulipomania" is a worthy addition to the canon of microhistorical works.

Whether you are a history or a plant buff, the history of the tulip is unquestionably a fascinating topic. If you are both a history and plant buff, like me, this topic is absolutely intoxicating. So deep and thought provoking are the moral and philosophical questions surrounding the tulip craze, it would seem nearly impossible to write a boring book on the subject. Nevertheless, I have read, or attempted to read, some books on this fascinating period of history that have nearly put me to sleep. Tulipomania by Mike Dash captures the essence of what makes the history of this plant so irresistible. Unlike a history book, he doesnt get overly bogged down with dates and names. Unlike a horticulture or botany book, he presents some of the technical details of the plant without using technical terms the average reader wouldnt appreciate. Rather, Mike Dash tells a story, which just happens to be about a plant, that spans over several hundred years. He paints a colorful picture of personalities, historical towns and, palaces that reads like a novel. However, unlike many novels, this book leaves the reader with many thought provoking questions. The reader is left pondering human social behavior, values, and the prostitution of nature. While enjoyable, this is anything but an empty, pass the time, light reading book. This book should be mandatory reading for all high school students. Mike Dash relays this fascinating saga so clearly; virtually everyone who reads this book will be forever touched. Our society could learn so much from the history of this plant, yet most American schools never even mention this fabulous saga. I know I will make sure my children read this book when they are older.

The tulip mania of the Dutch Golden Age has been recounted in a number of business, historical and botanical texts, but this was the first book I've read that pulled all the strands together in a concise, well-informed narrative.

Mr. Dash's background as a historian surely helped him compile the anecdotes, facts, figures and personal histories that created this book, but his skill as a writer and storyteller turn a worthwhile and informative read into a downright entertaining one. A very successful look back at history that informs without sacrificing the style, fun and detail that the readers look for. Because of this, TULIPOMANIA stands out from the pack. Well done!

Many gardeners may believe that the Dutch "created" the tulip, or that, at the very least, it was native to the region. The truth is, as we can learn from Mike Dash, that botanists introduced tulips to the Dutch after discovering them growing wild in the valleys and oases of the Pamir Mountains in Russia and the Tien Shan that border China. Out of these harsh mountains in Asia, tulips flourished and were held in high esteem by the Ottoman's and are considered sacred in the religion of Islam. By the 16th century, tulips were already being cultivated in Turkish gardens, and in the 1530s, it is rumored, Lopo Vaz de Sampayo brought the tulip to Western Europe for the first time. Over the span of another hundred years of discovery and cultivation, the tulips we know today as "Dutch" tulips were being sought after with vigor. Beautiful varieties (created, in part, by a mosaic virus) were being bought for a small fortune - and the most rare bulbs could command sums of several years' salary. More a book of incredible sociological and economic history than botanical information, Dash gives an interesting glimpse of the importance of taverns to the tulip trade and explains with detail that tulip mania is one of the earliest cases of futures trading. Although Dash's writing is occasionally repetitive, his study is a quick, easy and interesting read that can be enjoyed by anyone interested in the history of the Netherlands in the 17th century, gardening, economy or sociology.

Looking at history from the particular rather than the general point of view often seems to lead the reader easily into quite interesting perspectives on our past. This engaging, readable, fast paced book adds to my short list of history someone can read even if they don't think they like the genre.

Mr. Dash does a great job dragging the reader quickly along a clear path from rare Turkish flower to Dutch icon. Along the way, without much considering it, the reader will learn quite a bit about Europe in the 17th century, the Ottoman Empire, aspects of economics, and how the activities of individuals much like ourselves created trends and offered their nation a new way to trade with the world.

There are dot com parallels which add to the historical perpective -- anyone who follows recent economic trends will see parallels in the ways that individuals can follow the leaders into a new market and find their own fortunes.

Tulipomania is an amazing story, wonderfully told. Author Mike Dash has an easy, natural writing style, but he's also a gifted historian - Cambridge-educated, and with a PhD to boot, which makes him among the best qualified of all the writers in the narrative non-fiction genre. And, boy, can he write. To assemble, as Dash has done, more information on the tulip mania than any previous writer (comparing his account to the jejeune and utterly uniformed speculations of Mackay is like comparing a gourmet dinner to a tin of spaghetti) would be an achievement in itself. But the author has not only scoured not only the literature in English, Dutch and German, but also dredged through Dutch archives that have remained untouched for literally centuries - and still managed to turn out a book that is fast-paced, enticingly written and an example of how to move along a history that spans two continents and several decades. Very highly recommended indeed, to all lovers of good history.

Mike Dash has produced a highly engaging and entertaining account of the great Dutch tulip mania. Indeed, he has done much more than that. What distinguishes this book from other accounts of irrational bubbles and their burst s--of which the Dutch Tulip bubble is often cited as the classic example - is a concentration on tulips themselves - where they came from, whom they enchanted, and how their real connoisseurs were willing to pay fantastic sums for bulbs quite apart from the speculative mania that gripped Holland in 1636-7. The tale is well told, moving at a rapid clip, introducing a variety of captivating characters and proceeding without claiming more knowledge than the somewhat spotty records allow and without taking a high moral tone. Furthermore, the book relates not only the Dutch case of tulip enthusiasm, but also the Turkish one. In a well done afterword, Dash brings the story of flower manias up to the present - or at least to 1985 when a boom in spider lilies occurred in China. A very pleasant read that I found most engaging.

This slim volume is a remarkably entertaining cultural history of the tulip, focusing its particular attention on the Tulip Bubble of the Netherlands in the 1630s. Dash, however, back up and provides a very readable history of the flower and how it first made its way west to Europe, why it took root, so to speak, in the United Provinces, and how the sale of this flower evolved from the passion of a few dedicated botanists to a financial mania that swept the entire nation. Dash has done his research remarkably well (and I very much like the way he organizes his notes thematically), and he conveys his research in a way that is both erudite and charming. I heartily recommend for fans of popular history, financial history and gardening buffs.