Andrea Wulf

Providence Journal: The Brother Gardeners selected in Best Reads of 2009

Book Reviewers Chronicle a Year of Best Reads:

Every year at this time, we ask our reviewers to pick their five favorite books of the year just past, and tell us why.

Mark Dunkelman: THE BROTHER GARDENERS: Botany, Empire And The Birth Of An Obsession, by Andrea Wulf (Knopf, $35). A vivid chronicle of the 17th-century global trade in plants, and how it made England the epicenter of garden design and development.

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Richmond Times-Dispatch 10 favorite books of 2009: The Brother Gardeners

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Burbank Library Blog: Best Books of 2009 - The Brother Gardeners

"The book as a physical art object is not often mentioned in a book review, and when it is, seldom extensively or as the first item of note. This publication by Alfred Knopf, however, is simply a beautiful example of the art of the book, and the virtues of that art merit the lead ..."

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Review: New York Times Book Review - Behind Closed Doors by Amanda Vickery

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Review The Brother Gardeners, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Holiday Gift Guide: 

For the curious: The Brother Gardeners: Botany, Empire, and the Birth of an Obsession by Andrea Wulf, from Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, $35. This is a rarity - an entertaining history of those plant-crazed founding fathers of horticulture, as we practice it today. Two of the most interesting are London cloth merchant Peter Collinson and his New World business partner botanist John Bartram of Philadelphia. If I can get sucked into this book during my summer vacation, you'll definitely enjoy it over the winter.

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Review The Brother Gardeners, Muskogee Phoenix

"History is fascinating when an author is able to write like historian Andrea Wulf"

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And a really nice one from the blogs ... Scott Calhoun's Desert says this ...

Scott Calhoun's Desert

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For the last two years, I’ve sat on the American Horticultural Society’s Book Award Committee. This means that each week in November and December, two or three or six gardening books show up in my mailbox or on my doorstep to review, peruse, and ultimately judge...

this is what he says about The Brother Gardeners:

In Andrea Wulf’s The Brother Gardeners: Botany, Empire & The Birth of an Obsession, she brings to life the colonial world of plant trade beginning with the friendship, correspondence, and plant swapping between American plantsman John Bartram, and British merchant Peter Collinson.  The way Wulf mines the letters these men exchanged is exhaustive and magnificent. Along the way, we get a personal picture of the brilliant, arrogant, and persistent father of modern botany, Carl Linnaeus, and his more affable student Daniel Solander. Lest you think that the book is set in drawing rooms filled with rattling tea cups, plant presses, and powdered wigs, Wulf peppers her text with tales of English playboys on high seas plant adventures,Tahitian orgies, bouts of malaria, and glimpses into Benjamin Franklin’s passion for horticulture. I can’t think of a more interesting introduction to the sport we call gardening. 

Article Kew Magazine: Meeting of Minds, winter 2009, The interwoven history of the Royal Society and Kew Gardens

As the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and the Royal Society both celebrate significant anniversaries, Andrea Wulf looks back at the long and often interwoven history of these eminent scientific institutions.

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Review Mail on Sunday: Sugar. A Bittersweet History by Elizabeth Abbott

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