American Eden

Finalist for the 2018 National Book Award for Nonfiction A New York Times Editors' Choice Selection The untold story of Hamilton’s—and Burr’s—personal physician, whose dream to build America’s first botanical garden inspired the young Republic. On a clear morning in July 1804, Alexander Hamilton stepped onto a boat at the edge of the Hudson River. He was bound for a New Jersey dueling ground to settle his bitter dispute with Aaron Burr. Hamilton took just two men with him: his “second” for the duel, and Dr. David Hosack. As historian Victoria Johnson reveals in her groundbreaking biography, Hosack was one of the few points the duelists did agree on. Summoned that morning because of his role as the beloved Hamilton family doctor, he was also a close friend of Burr. A brilliant surgeon and a world-class botanist, Hosack—who until now has been lost in the fog of history—was a pioneering thinker who shaped a young nation. Born in New York City, he was educated in Europe and returned to America inspired by his newfound knowledge. He assembled a plant collection so spectacular and diverse that it amazes botanists today, conducted some of the first pharmaceutical research in the United States, and introduced new surgeries to American. His tireless work championing public health and science earned him national fame and praise from the likes of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander von Humboldt, and the Marquis de Lafayette. One goal drove Hosack above all others: to build the Republic’s first botanical garden. Despite innumerable obstacles and near-constant resistance, Hosack triumphed when, by 1810, his Elgin Botanic Garden at last crowned twenty acres of Manhattan farmland. “Where others saw real estate and power, Hosack saw the landscape as a pharmacopoeia able to bring medicine into the modern age” (Eric W. Sanderson, author of Mannahatta). Today what remains of America’s first botanical garden lies in the heart of midtown, buried beneath Rockefeller Center. Whether collecting specimens along the banks of the Hudson River, lecturing before a class of rapt medical students, or breaking the fever of a young Philip Hamilton, David Hosack was an American visionary who has been too long forgotten. Alongside other towering figures of the post-Revolutionary generation, he took the reins of a nation. In unearthing the dramatic story of his life, Johnson offers a lush depiction of the man who gave a new voice to the powers and perils of nature.

At the turn of the nineteenth century—when most food in America was bland and brown and few people appreciated the economic potential of then-exotic foods—David Fairchild convinced the U.S. Department of Agriculture to finance overseas explorations to find and bring back foreign cultivars. Fairchild traveled to remote corners of the globe, searching for fruits, vegetables, and grains that could find a new home in American fields and in the American diet. In Fruits of Eden, Amanda Harris vividly recounts the exploits of Fairchild and his small band of adventurers and botanists as they traversed distant lands—Algeria, Baghdad, Cape Town, Hong Kong, Java, and Zanzibar—to return with new and exciting flavors. Their expeditions led to a renaissance not only at the dinner table but also in horticulture, providing diversity of crops for farmers across the country. Not everyone was supportive, however. The scientific community was concerned with invasive species, and World War I fanned the flames of xenophobia in Washington. Adversaries who believed Fairchild’s discoveries would contaminate the purity of native crops eventually shut down his program, but his legacy lives on in today’s modern kitchen, where navel oranges, Meyer lemons, honeydew melons, soybeans, and durum wheat are now standard.

Irrigation came to the arid West in a wave of optimism about the power of water to make the desert bloom. Mark Fiege’s fascinating and innovative study of irrigation in southern Idaho’s Snake River valley describes a complex interplay of human and natural systems. Using vast quantities of labor, irrigators built dams, excavated canals, laid out farms, and brought millions of acres into cultivation. But at each step, nature rebounded and compromised the intended agricultural order. The result was a new and richly textured landscape made of layer upon layer of technology and intractable natural forces—one that engineers and farmers did not control with the precision they had anticipated. Irrigated Eden vividly portrays how human actions inadvertently helped to create a strange and sometimes baffling ecology. Winner of the Idaho Library Association Book Award, 1999 Winner of the Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Award, Forest History Society, 1999-2000

“American Eden moves luminously through landscapes of history, literature, biography, and design theory. . . . fusing sharp-edged analysis and graceful American prose.” —Kevin Starr, author of Golden Gate: The Life and Times of America's Greatest Bridge “Informative and absolutely engrossing.” —Ross King, author of Brunelleschi's Dome Garden designer and historian Wade Graham offers a unique vision of the story of America in this riveting exploration of the nation’s gardens and the visionaries behind them, from Thomas Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello to Michelle Obama’s vegetable garden, Fredrick Law Olmsted’s expansive Central Park to Martha Stewart’s how-to landscaping guides. In the tradition of Mark Kurlansky, Simon Schama, and Michael Pollan, Graham delivers a sweeping social history that examines our nation’s history from an overlooked vantage point, illuminating anew the living drama of American self-creation.

Sixth book in Eden series, first one set in America.

Earl Cunningham's intensely colored landscapes are American Edens filled with wonder.

A bewitching look at nonnative species in American ecosystems, by the heir apparent to McKibben and Quammen.

In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were tempted to take a bite out of an apple that promised them the "knowledge of good and evil." Today, a shiny apple with a bite out of it is the symbol of Apple Computers. The age of the Internet has speeded up human knowledge, and it also provides even more temptation to know more than may be good for us. Americans have been right at the forefront of the digital revolution, and we have felt its unsettling effects in both our religions and our politics. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite argues that we long to return to the innocence of the Garden of Eden and not be faced with countless digital choices. But returning to the innocence of Eden is dangerous in this modern age and, instead, we can become wiser about the wired world.

During the sixties, says Morris Dickstein, America seemed to be at the gates of Eden--verging on a new way of experiencing life, art, and culture. In this provocative book, he discusses how we reached the gates and why, in the end, they remained closed. Beginning with Allen Ginsberg and the Beat poets of the late fifties, Dickstein traces the rise of a new sensibility in American thought, writing, and music through lively and incisive analyses of such sixties icons as Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Bob Dylan, Norman Mailer, Ralph Ellison, Joseph Heller, Paul Goodman, Norman O. Brown, and the Rolling Stones. Now, on the twentieth anniversary of the book's original publication, Dickstein has written a new introduction, reassessing the period's achievements and failures, and providing a fresh perspective on the ways that the sixties continue to influence our politics and culture.