ePub A Gardener Touched With Genius: The Life of Luther Burbank download

by Peter Dreyer

Author:

Peter Dreyer

ISBN13:

978-0520051164

ISBN:

0520051165

Language:

English

Publisher:

Univ of California Pr; Revised, Subsequent edition (April 1, 1985)

Category:

Engineers

Subcategory:

Engineering

ePub file:

1802 kb

Fb2 file:

1902 kb

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Rating:

4.3

Votes:

295

Peter Dreyer Engineering English

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According to Peter Dreyer's meticulous life - necessarily incomplete as the records are not that good - the white .

According to Peter Dreyer's meticulous life - necessarily incomplete as the records are not that good - the white blackberry was one of Burbank's failures. Not especially good eating, it disappeared once the novelty of it wore off. Burbank himself believed that any character could be coaxed out of a plant by a sufficiently skilled breeder, because he believed that all qualities existed in the germ plasm. He disbelieved in mutations. He has made tremendous changes in American and international fruit and vegetable variety and acceptance.

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Burbank, Luther, 1849-1926, Plant breeders - United States - Biography, Plant breeders. Berkeley : University of California Press. inlibrary; printdisabled; ; china. Books for People with Print Disabilities. Internet Archive Books. Uploaded by Lotu Tii on May 20, 2013. SIMILAR ITEMS (based on metadata). Terms of Service (last updated 12/31/2014).

Instead Dreyer dwells at length on Burbank's considerable achievements: the Burbank . If you enjoy reading seed catalogues, you'll love this book

Instead Dreyer dwells at length on Burbank's considerable achievements: the Burbank potato, the Burbank plum, the Iceberg blackberry, the Shasta daisy, and the infamous spineless cactus. If you enjoy reading seed catalogues, you'll love this book. Relatively little space is devoted to Burbank's life and times; the Mrs. Burbanks I and II are summarily dismissed as bad apples, while Mother and Sister Burbank come up smelling like roses.

Barbara A. Kimmelman. Similar books and articles. Luther's Topology: Creatio Ex Nihilo and the Cultivation of the Concept of Place in Martin Luther's Theology. Jon Mackenzie - 2013 - Modern Theology 29 (2):83-103. Isis 77 (4):728-729 (1986). A Gardener Touched With Genius: The Life Of Luther Burbank By Peter Dreyer. Barbara Kimmelman - 1986 - Isis: A Journal of the History of Science 77:728-729. A Gardener Touched with Genius: The Life of Luther Burbank. Peter Dreyer - 1986 - Journal of the History of Biology 19 (2):316-317. Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer. Paul Schrader - 1972. Kivy on Musical Genius.

A Gardener Touched with Genius: The Life of Luther Burbank (Author: Peter Dreyer) This striking biography .

A Gardener Touched with Genius: The Life of Luther Burbank (Author: Peter Dreyer) This striking biography of the legendary horticulturist is captivating reading for the garden lover and the botanical specialist.

Peter Richard Dreyer (born November 15, 1939) is the author of A Beast in View (London: André Deutsch), The Future of Treason (New York: Ballantine), A Gardener Touched with Genius: The Life of Luther Burbank (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan; rev. e. Berkeley: University of California Press; new, expanded e. Santa Rosa, CA: Luther Burbank Home & Gardens), and Martyrs and Fanatics: South Africa and Human Destiny (New York: Simon & Schuster; London: Secker & Warburg)

A Gardener Touched with Genius: The Life of Luther Burbank. New York: Coward McCann & Geoghegan, 975.

A Gardener Touched with Genius: The Life of Luther Burbank. Harwood, William Summer. Chicago: The Open Court Pub. 907. Santa Rosa, CA: Luther Burbank Home and Gardens, City of Santa Rosa, 1985. Jordan, David Starr, and Vernon L. Kellogg. Biographical material is also in Henry Smith Williams, Luther Burbank: His Life and Work (1915). For a favorable assessment of Burbank's scientific work see David Starr Jordan and Vernon L. Kellogg, The Scientific Aspects of Luther Burbank's Work (1909).

Sy Scholfield quotes "A Gardener Touched with Genius: The Life of Luther Burbank" by Peter Dreyer (Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1975), p. 60: "a boy born of plain people at Lancaster, Massachusetts

Sy Scholfield quotes "A Gardener Touched with Genius: The Life of Luther Burbank" by Peter Dreyer (Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1975), p. 60: "a boy born of plain people at Lancaster, Massachusetts,. Luther Burbank was born at 11:57 . on March 7, 1849, three days after the Inauguration of "Old Rough-and-Ready" Zachary Taylor. Same data in Sabian Symbols N. 50.

Recounts the career and personal life of the Massachusetts-born horticulturist, chronicling his extensive and influential plant experiments and distinguishing his genuine and lasting achievements from his popular reputation

Gaiauaco

It's probably a good book, just wasn't the book for me. I'm interested in Burbank, and somewhat interested in botany, and definitely interested in some of the plants that he bred, and so forth. The book is just too slow or too dry for me, perhaps both. I'm not quite ready to get rid of it yet though; I think it might be a good reference to flip through sometime. I was disappointed that it wasn't a more enjoyable biography to read, though.

Dagdage

used book came from someone who used to be a tour guide, came with notes and cards about his life. amazing! (most likely the book you order won't come with the same notes)

Tam

Luther Burbank was a very unique man--totally connected to his plants and wanting to share his genius for the good of others.
Very interesting read,

Porgisk

I wanted more of a biography of Luthor Burbank, but this book started out with an obscure treatise on botany. It is more like a textbook than a history of the man--who he knew, what he was like, and what motivated him.

Lemana

This book is a very readable and well-researched biography of Luther Burbank. Dreyer outlines the main events of Burbank's life, from his family ancestry in Massachusetts, his early interest in plants, to his move to California and successful career as a plant breeder. Dreyer also discusses how Burbank's reputation was built and some of the controversies surrounding his work. Historical facts are well documented with endnotes. There is also an index.

I found this book to be an excellent introduction to the life and work of Luther Burbank. Dreyer discusses some of the influences on Burbank's life. He also provides much historical background to put Burbank's work into context. It was fascinating to read, for instance, how much Burbank was influenced by Darwin's work, and how he rejected Mendelian genetics yet developed an intuitive sense of how traits were passed from generation to generation. Dreyer's discussion of the importance of Burbank's genetic discoveries was particularly interesting, especially when juxtaposed with George Shull's descriptions of Burbank's less than meticulous documentation of his methodology. Overall, the book provides a well-rounded overview of the life of one of the leading horticulturalists of the 19th century.

Sirara

I don't know if Luther Burbank is still a household name. When I was a boy in the '50s, everybody knew that Burbank was the world's greatest plant breeder, although other than creating a white blackberry, I don't think many of us knew what he had done. But we understood that a man who could conjure up a white blackberry was a genius.

According to Peter Dreyer's meticulous life -- necessarily incomplete as the records are not that good -- the white blackberry was one of Burbank's failures. Not especially good eating, it disappeared once the novelty of it wore off.

Burbank himself believed that any character could be coaxed out of a plant by a sufficiently skilled breeder, because he believed that all qualities existed in the germ plasm. He disbelieved in mutations.

This was an open question when Burbank began his plant nursery in the 1870s. Before his career ended in the '20s, knowledge had caught up with Burbank but he did not change his opinion.

He was a -- perhaps almost, the -- stellar example of the self-made Yankee artificer. Only Thomas Edison, perhaps, had a greater reputation with the public. He was also one of the first to benefit from and be tortured by the modern pulicity apparatus.

Newspapers and magazines were insatiable for copy, and while Dreyer emphasizes the magazines and never mentions the Sunday supplements, it was the supplements that ensure that everyone knew the names of Burbank, Edison, Einstein and Fitzgerald. The Hearst papers alone printed 30 million copies, seen by at least 60 million, Americans -- nearly half the population.

The supplements were not too discriminating nor reliable. Burbank was not so widely admired by professional botanists. but like Alfred Wagener (the author of continental drift), Burbank's real achievements were discounted by the professionals. Public opinion was, in his case, more nearly accurate.

He gave his enemies plenty of ammunition to use against him. In business, he fell into the hands of stockjobbers, who boomed his enthusiasm for prickly pear cactus as a desert cattle fodder. (Burbank tried to breed a spineless variety, never quite succeeding.)

Ironically, his greatest achievement was not in breeding. It was his sharp eye that spotted a potato seed pod (a very rare event, it was the only one Burbank ever encountered), saved it, selected two offspring and gave America the Burbank potato -- now more commonly called a russet, baker or Idaho potato, but at one time sold as a Burbank potato.

His entrepreneurial acumen was remarkable. The breeder of the Concord grape (also a New England boy) went broke trying to defend his discovery from poachers. Burbank sold his stock, and all rights, to nurserymen for lofty prices (sometimes $3,000 in the 1890s), and left it to them to market, publicize and protect the rights.

To make this work, he had to produce thousands of new varieties, some scores each year, and he did. A summary of his introductions published as an appendix in "A Gardener Touched with Genius" runs to 110 pages.

He died very well-off though unsuccessful as a breeder personally. His two marriages were barren and his relations with women generally were unhappy.

The story of Burbank is worth remembering. "Charisma is a double-edged instrument," writes Dreyer. "He was trapped by his admirers."

The admirers have passed on now and we can appreciate Burbank better for what he was and what he wasn't -- one of the greatest Americans of the early modern era, a man with opinions on many other subjects besides plants, some of them worth thinking about today.

Reighbyra

The "revised edition" (1985) is almost a completely new version of the first edition. Peter Dreyer has done remarkable work interviewing primary sources and unearthing new material. In Dreyer's telling of the life of Luther Burbank, the great American horticulturalist, it seems that no stone, no document, no illuminating background material is ignored. This is Luther Burbank, warts and all. The flavor and sense of this complicated man come across vividly, and the result is we see Burbank in all his paradoxical dimensions: successful plant-breeder who had two fruitless marriages; public image as sage and saint but seen close-up by some as a cold, defensive person; a man who could display profound modesty then sudden blatant self-praise. In this biography there arises a sense that he was a man way ahead of his time, Luther Burbank as the Patron Saint of the New Age.

In recent move for consilience of the sciences, I found myself in search of "A Gardener Touched with Genius: the Life of Luther Burback". He has made tremendous changes in American and international fruit and vegetable variety and acceptance. As physician I must say this improves our nutritional choices. I was thrilled to see the photograph of Luther Burbank together with Henry Ford and with Hugo de Vries in California. Hugo de Vries of the University of Leiden, in the Netherlands brought to light the writings of Gregor Mendel, furthered the genetic research, and wrote on Mutation theory in 1910. The life of Luther Burbank is good reading and will encourage future scientists to reach out and ask questions.

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