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From Amazon.com
With such willing customers, it's no wonder that a thriving black market now exists. To serve it, orchids are taken illegally from sensitive ecological areas in places like Thailand, Borneo, and darkest Minnesota. In scenes reminiscent of Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief, Hansen follows the trail of orchid smugglers, pursuing money and plants in a whodunit tale that involves botanical gardens, scholars, scientists, ordinary enthusiasts, and "plant cops"--international eco-police whose job it is to stop the traffic in rare and often endangered plants. Those vigilantes have their work cut out for them, Hansen writes, especially because some of the current laws may be misguided, causing more harm than good and equating honest breeders with botanical desperadoes. The laws are bound to fail in any event, he suggests, if only because the plant trade, like that of the drug trade, is simply too big to curtail.
Orchid enthusiasts and admirers of good journalism alike will find plenty of interest in Hansen's vivid, richly anecdotal investigation. --Gregory McNamee --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Orchid Lunacy,
By
This review is from: Orchid Fever: A Horticultural Tale of Love, Lust, and Lunacy (Paperback)
Eric Hansen's Orchid Fever is a quick, breezy and highly entertaining read. I just picked up a copy at one of the Orchid Gardens mentioned in the book, and will never look at the place the same way again. As with any avocation that stirs passion, the world of orchids has produced as many oddball varieties of aficionados as there are varieties of orchids. Hnasen brings them all wonderfully to life and you feel like a friend to many of them (except for the CITES nazis). Being relatively new to the orchid world I was able to appreciate the references to certain species, but by no means do you have to grow or even like orchids to love the book. I read the book in a day and my thoughts today have drifted to wondering about the characters that I had met, such as Xavier in Paris and the Harley-riding guys in the States that have been infected by the Orchid Fever.The book wraps up with a heartwarming tale of Tom Nelson in Minnesota, slogging through blackfly and mosquito infested roadside ditches to save native plants from destruction. Not out of money but because it is the right and noble thing to do. It is people like him that give a glimmer of hope in a world that can often cause despair. Eric Hansen's book also serves the same purpose and I highly recommend it!
5.0 out of 5 stars
Orchid Fever,
By A Customer
This review is from: Orchid Fever: A Horticultural Tale of Love, Lust, and Lunacy (Paperback)
What a tremendous read - I had to keep reminding myself it was non-fiction! Eric, I really was entertained.
5.0 out of 5 stars
It Gives Me Fever,
By Laura Swearingen-Steadwell (Amherst, MA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Orchid Fever: A Horticultural Tale of Love, Lust, and Lunacy (Paperback)
This morning at around two AM, I polished off the last page of 'Orchid Fever'. As a budding author and a generally inquisitive person, I appreciated this work very much. What Hansen has accomplished is a triumph in the field of literary journalism: the perfect balance of interview, research, politics, imagination and anecdote. He has availed his readership of such a wide array of facts, and made them so accessible--! Running through those pages was as effortless as taking in a deep, clean breath of air, yet that single breath has left me so happy and fulfilled...As I read, I searched the Web for images of the blossoms (and some of the places) he described; this provided me with the perfect counterpoint to your lush prose. No doubt the cost of publishing a work with full-color photographs would be outrageous (and I am grateful for the affordability of the book), but I cannot imagine having grasped his meaning as fully without sneaking a peek for myself. Doubtless other readers have been, and will be likewise compelled. I am so grateful for the years Hansen put into this book. He has sparked in me a gentle strain of orchid fever, nonetheless one that will surely follow me through life.
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