Pinnock Frances:Semiramide e le sue sorelle. Immagini di donne nell'antica Mesopotamia
- edition reliée, livre de poche 2009, ISBN: 9788876245282
University of Chicago Press. Very Good. 6.52 x 1.46 x 9.38 inches. Hardcover. 2009. 493 pages. <br>Disheartened by the shrink-wrapped, Styrofoam-pack ed state of contemporary superm… Plus…
University of Chicago Press. Very Good. 6.52 x 1.46 x 9.38 inches. Hardcover. 2009. 493 pages. <br>Disheartened by the shrink-wrapped, Styrofoam-pack ed state of contemporary supermarket fruits and vegetables, many shoppers hark back to a more innocent time, to visions of succule nt red tomatoes plucked straight from the vine, gleaming orange c arrots pulled from loamy brown soil, swirling heads of green lett uce basking in the sun. With Hybrid, Noel Kingsbury reveals that even those imaginary perfect foods are themselves far from anyth ing that could properly be called natural; rather, they represent the end of a millennia-long history of selective breeding and hy bridization. Starting his story at the birth of agriculture, King sbury traces the history of human attempts to make plants more re liable, productive, and nutritious--a story that owes as much to accident and error as to innovation and experiment. Drawing on hi storical and scientific accounts, as well as a rich trove of anec dotes, Kingsbury shows how scientists, amateur breeders, and coun tless anonymous farmers and gardeners slowly caused the evolution ary pressures of nature to be supplanted by those of human needs- -and thus led us from sparse wild grasses to succulent corn cobs, and from mealy, white wild carrots to the juicy vegetables we en joy today. At the same time, Kingsbury reminds us that contempora ry controversies over the Green Revolution and genetically modifi ed crops are not new; plant breeding has always had a political d imension. A powerful reminder of the complicated and ever-evolvi ng relationship between humans and the natural world, Hybrid will give readers a thoughtful new perspective on--and a renewed appr eciation of--the cereal crops, vegetables, fruits, and flowers th at are central to our way of life. Editorial Reviews Review Sh oppers who shun genetically modified foods in favor of 'natural' fruits and veggies may be in for a surprise. Horticulturalist Kin gsbury's lively history documents the history of human meddling w ith plant genes since the dawn of agriculture. ? Discover Artful ly linking human cultural evolution and the 10,000-year history o f plant breeding, Kingsbury moves fluidly between the art and sci ence of plant breeding and the growth of increasingly complex hum an society and politics. He convinced me, at least temporarily, t hat plant technologies have been a major contributor to many impo rtant developments in human history. . . . Hybrid provides an inf ormative tour of plant breeding through time, its interface with society and cultural evolution, and the people who contributed to this history. Kingsbury's account should be required reading for students preparing for a future as a plant breeder, geneticist, or molecular biologist. Fortunately, that requirement should prov e unnecessary--the book is engaging at many levels, and I expect many scientists and lay readers to pick it up on their own accord . ? Science A novel might be hard pressed to imagine some of the incredible stories covered in this book. -- Neil Lucas ? English Gardener An evenhanded history of plant breeding. ? Organic Gar dening Kingsbury, a horticulturist, has written an informative a nd readable account of how the plants on our plates came to be. H e introduces readers to the unlikely ancestors of today's kitchen -friendly vegetables: scraggly weeds that became cereal crops, a wild grain that turned into an ear of corn, and other ancestral o ddities, all transformed by people, keen to cultivate nutritious and tasty foods. Humans domesticated plants like animals, encoura ging, selecting, and changing their genetic blueprint. Check out competitive gooseberry breeding in nineteenth-century Britain. It 's wry, or is that rye? ? Australian Breeders have taken an acti ve role in plants' reproduction throughout human history. ? Scien ce News The reason you and billions of other people will eat tod ay is a century-long effort to increase the yield of crop plants. Hybrid tells the story of the quiet heroes behind this triumph. Noel Kingsbury has written a fantastic history of a subject that should become much better known. -- Gregg Easterbrook, author, So nic Boom I will never look at a slice of bread or grain of rice the same way, having read Hybrid. By recounting the history of pl ant breeding, the author has revealed the many choices made in cr eating the crops of today and yesterday, and challenges us to thi nk about our choices for tomorrow. -- Cathy Maloney, author of Ch icago Gardens In plant breeding, just as in evolution, genetic v ariety is the raw material of success. Hybrid is the story of how the genes that make a fat corn cob, a luscious apple, a brillian tly orange carrot or a high yielding strain of rice have traveled by serpentine paths to reach the genomes of the crops that we so depend on and yet so take for granted. In Hybrid we learn that t here was a green revolution in eleventh-century China when a visi onary emperor imported new strains of rice from Indochina; how wo rking men in nineteenth-century Britain made a sport of competiti ve gooseberry breeding, and how a German doctor discovered hybrid vigor in plants. Hybrid the book displays, like hybrids themselv es, all the marvelous fruit of miscellany. -- Jonathan Silvertown , author of An Orchard Invisible: A Natural History of Seeds A m agnificent achievement-Kingsbury tells this gripping story, with a large cast of characters across the entire span of human civili zation, with wit, passion, and erudition. -- Tim Richardson, auth or of The Arcadian Friends: Inventing the English Landscape Garde n Thoughtful, well researched and refreshingly broad in scope, N oel Kingsbury's Hybrid took me out of my immediate area of expert ise (plants and garden history) and opened my eyes to the way pre viously unsung plant breeders have transformed societies. Accessi ble to specialists and non-specialists, it should be essential re ading for anyone wishing to take an informed view on the future d irection of biotechnology. -- Jennifer Potter, author of Strange Blooms: The Curious Lives and Adventures of the John Tradescants About the Author Noel Kingsbury is a best-selling horticulturali st and writer. He is the author of many books, including Designin g with Plants, Natural Gardening in Small Spaces, and Gardening w ith Perennials: Lessons from Chicago's Lurie Garden, as well as t he coeditor of Vista: The Culture and Politics of Gardens. He liv es and gardens in western England near the world-famous book town of Hay-on-Wye. ., University of Chicago Press, 2009, 3, Milano: Skira, 2006. Milano, 2006; ril., pp. 320, ill., tavv., cm 16x22. (Biblioteca d'Arte Skira). Over the last thirty years more or less, feminist archaeology, or rather "female" archaeology, has endeavoured to shed some light on the role of women in societies of the past and remove some prejudices that are very deeply rooted. Attention has been given firstly to the field of daily life, family life, matrimony, maternity and the organisation of productive activity that are intrinsically domestic. Though an extremely intriguing line of research regards female power, which must often be sought behind the wings, a "secret engine" of male action, it is perhaps even more interesting to study how certain rare ascendancies of women to power have been misrepresented and transformed by historical and literary tradition, usually a field dominated by men: thus the women of ancient societies who rose to become queens were almost always seen as usurpers, vindictive and dissolute, blood-thirsty and destined to meet a tragic end, a just punishment for their heinous crimes. From this point of view it goes without saying that their most unforgivable crime was to have seized power, a fact from which all other evil consequences ensued. The analysis of the role of women seems even more difficult in the ancient near east, because of the lack of material documentation and the lack of objectivity in textual documentation. Perhaps it has not been possible to produce a portrait of the "Mesopotamian woman", but it is certain that some women of Mesopotamia have certainly been highlighted as active participants in the society of their time and still maintain, in some cases, great evocative charm for us though we approach them with much difficulty and uncertainty., Skira, 2006, 0<