Review
Praise for Jane S. Smith's The Garden of Invention:
"A colorful, far-reaching book about the genetic, agricultural, economic and legal issues raised by Burbank's life and legend...Entertaining...[a] well-woven narrative...Impressive." -- Janet Maslin, The New York Times
"A first-class portrait -- witty, seamless and unflaggingly informed....[The Garden of Invention] brings Burbank to pulsing life even as it teaches plant science, patent law, eugenics, evolution and the fate of the prickly pear....I was, from its first sentence to last, a most grateful reader.” -- The Chicago Tribune
"A long overdue volume in food literature -- a great story, well told." -- Mark Kurlansky, author of Cod and Salt
From the Inside Flap
Fascinated by chickens? You are in good company. Aristotle, Plato, Shakespeare, Thomas Jefferson, Charles Darwin, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Mark Twain are just a few of the great names who have written about the mysteries of roosters, hens, chicks, and eggs. In Praise of Chickens provides centuries of poultry lore gathered from scientists, artists, poets, philosophers, breeders, sellers, feather fanciers, and egg-coddlers through the ages. Ever wonder if chickens have their very own vocabulary, how to get hens to lay in winter, or why churches have weathervanes shaped like roosters? Can't remember which royal court it was where the ladies hatched eggs in their bosoms? Whether you want the earliest recorded instructions on how to hypnotize a chicken, or nineteenth-century tips on sending a year's supply of fresh eggs to your child in college, you'll find the answer here, along with portraits of prize-winning breeds both fierce and fluffy.In Praise of Chickens is full of information both practical and frivolous (and who can have enough of either sort?), wonderful pictures, ample poultry trivia for at least a year of dinner party or Chicken Meet-Up conversations, and a way of connecting with a time when living closer to the natural world was normal, honorable, and fun.
From the Back Cover
A lavishly illustrated and delightfully surprising celebration of a bird that has captured the world’s imagination
A little plot of ground, a little poultry house, a little flock of hens, and a little love for domestic animals, make a combination which will give the poor man in a city, at trifling cost, luxuries for which his rich neighbor is glad to pay liberally.
—John Henry Robinson, Poultry-Craft, 1899
About the Author
Jane S. Smith writes about the intersection of science, nature, taste, and popular culture. She received her Ph. D. in English from Yale University and has taught at Northwestern University in fields ranging from literature to preventive medicine. Her history of the first polio vaccine, Patenting the Sun: Polio and the Salk Vaccine (William Morrow), received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Elsie de Wolfe: A Life in the High Style (Atheneum) remains the definitive biography of the woman who transformed taste from an attitude into an industry. Her comic novel Fool’s Gold (Zoland) won the Adult Fiction Award from the Society of Midland Authors. Her most recent book, The Garden of Invention: Luther Burbank and the Business of Breeding Plants (Penguin Press 2009), was awarded the Caroline Bancroft Prize in Western History. She and her husband live in Chicago, where she works in a very small room with a very large window.
