Pomegranate Roads: A Soviet Botanist's Exile from Eden

Average Customer Rating: Find Out More Info Manufacturer: Floreant Press
Binding: Paperback Dewey Decimal Number: 580.92 EAN: 9780964949768 ISBN: 0964949768 Label: Floreant Press Manufacturer: Floreant Press Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 183 Publication Date: 2006-11-30 Publisher: Floreant Press Studio: Floreant Press
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Editorial Reviews:
Spotlight customer reviews: Customer Rating: Summary: A must have for botany geeks! Comment: Wow. This book makes me long for my grad school days. What an inspired story of scientific pursuit, history, evolution, ethnobotany, and the love of pomegranates. I love this book so much I want to eat it. This is a must read. He includes detailed descriptions of plant guilds that would grow well in dry places and some information that could lead readers to find sources of pomegranate germplasm. I love how he weaves his story together. The botanical terminology makes my heart flutter! I want to visit the places he's been. Reading this book right now is especially poignant as many place names he uses have been on the news as sites of bombing and military action. I wish it were not so and this book gives me greater depth of appreciation for the history, ecology, and beauty of these areas. Customer Rating: Summary: A trip in time and Flora Comment: I was expecting just information about pomegranates. Boy did I have pleasant surprise. Pomegranate Roads not only gets the the 'ole taste buds salivating, but it also provides amazing insight into a man with a great passion for his work. Equally impressive is the historical perspective of the fall of the USSR and what it did to this small part of biological diversity as well as the cultural impacts. An excellent memoir unto itself. Customer Rating: Summary: Best book on Pomegranate history available Comment: If you are curious about pomegranates, this is the book for you! Even if you do not eat them or grow them, this is a wonderful story about human passion. Customer Rating: Summary: An Adventure in Pomegranates! Comment: I purchased this book primarily to learn about pomegranates as I am in the process of planting a small orchard of pomegranates. I found it to be a wonderful history lesson and an adventure. I am planting several of Dr. Levin's cultivars and have a great appreciation for all of the work he carried out for some 40 years, often at great risk of life. I often felt I was on these adventures and now wonder if I could ever participate in some exploratory treks. It's painful to read how the research stations have been bulldozed and wish more of the 1,117 cultivars could be rescued. It was hard to put this book down and I now have a much greater appreciation for being able to grow some of Dr. Levin's cultivars. I only hope I can do them justice! Customer Rating: Summary: Exploring the life of an explorer Comment: Some chapters of this book make you feel like you've just watched an Indiana Jones movie, while other chapters would make a great NOVA science episode. On his scientific treasure hunt for exotic pomegranates, Dr.Gregory Levin has--unassumingly-- run into vipers dancing on their tails, and seen cave paintings of kangaroos on the border of Iran and Turkmenistan! Levin knows which godesses were idolized in pomegranates and what the penalty was for felling a pomegranate tree in ancient Egypt. Yet the tone of this adventure is deeply thoughtful. In 1941 when young Levin and his parents were digging trenches around Leningrad in preparation for the seige, Levin watched a drift of butterflies land on a nearby tree. "Their life cycle was ending," Levin says,"and they had all landed on the tree to die. The tree was their cemetary." Here's an author who sees reflections of the human condition in Nature all around us. And like a good hiking companion he doesn't keep pointing things out, but leaves you alone to take it all in for yourself. Ari Siletz, author of "The Mullah With No Legs and Other Stories." More Reviews