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Book ReviewsOrchid Fever |
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Book: Orchid Fever
Written by: Eric Hansen Jeff Harding |
Publisher: Ulverscroft Large Print Books
Average Customer Rating: 5.0 / 5
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Orchid Fever
Rating:
5 / 5
Easy reading,interesting,and educational.After reading Orchid Fever,I read a comment in Orchids at Home,and having read Orchid Fever,I realized that ugly,just like beauty,is in the eye of the beholder.
A Book you soon will not Forget
Rating:
5 / 5
I can not imagine this book getting too many one star ratings. A similar book on the same subject, "Orchid Thief" portrays the wackiness of Americans crazed by Orchid collecting, but America takes 2nd place in this book that gives a worldwide view of the extremes
Orchid collectors go to, to pursue the object of their desire. The author's style is extemely entertaining, and it shows that much globe trotting and investigative work went into obtaining material for this book. The author hears a rumor that in Turkey children can jump rope with a concoction made from orchids and this rope can be made into a type of orchid ice cream. The author is off to Turkey for some detective work, or pursuing a reclusive Orchid theif for an interview.
One of the main points of this book is that often these orchid fanatics are considered shady characters by the international Orchid conservation groups and their CITES law. The spirit and the results of CITES law seems to be at cross-purposes. The CITES regulations are actually preventing wild samples from being shipped to areas where they can be studied and propagated. Making natural pockets of rare orchids even more valuable. The author gives numerous examples of rare Orchids in their natural locations becoming a victim of a third world country's development program, logging, or highway construction which the CITES laws are powerless to stop. All in All an excellent book the brings to light a bizarre interesting world that some people are caught up in.
Hansen turns his gaze
Rating:
4 / 5
Eric Hansen is an author who seeks out that which is foreign to the Average American or Western European. His "Motoring with Mohammed" and "Stranger in the Forest" fascinate because of their exotic cultures and locations. "Orchid Fever," on the other hand, focuses on the intersection between the Western and the exotic, and our culture is the one that comes off as strange and illogical. The locus of that intersection is the orchid and its cultivation. The cultural structures, the bureaucratic labyrinths, the idiosyncratic obsessions associated with this family of plants is almost . . . almost . . . unbelievable. It's typical Hansen: excellent prose, strange worlds.
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