The Fruit Hunters: A Story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce, and Obsession | 
 enlarge | Author: Adam Leith Gollner
Publisher: Scribner
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
Buy New: $12.45
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Avg. Customer Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 27678
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6 x 1.2
ISBN: 074329694X
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.34
EAN: 9780743296946
ASIN: 074329694X
Publication Date: May 20, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: Brand New Books! Orders usually ship with 24 hours!
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Product Description
Delicious, lethal, hallucinogenic and medicinal, fruits have led nations to war, fueled dictatorships and lured people into new worlds. An expedition through the fascinating world of fruit, The Fruit Hunters is the engrossing story of some of Earth's most desired foods. In lustrous prose, Adam Leith Gollner draws readers into a Willy Wonka-like world with mangoes that taste like pina coladas, orange cloudberries, peanut butter fruits and the miracle fruit that turns everything sour to sweet, making lemons taste like lemonade. Peopled with a cast of characters as varied and bizarre as the fruit -- smugglers, inventors, explorers and epicures -- this extraordinary book unveils the mysterious universe of fruit, from the jungles of Borneo to the prized orchards of Florida's fruit hunters to American supermarkets. Gollner examines the fruits we eat and explains why we eat them (the scientific, economic and aesthetic reasons); traces the life of mass-produced fruits (how they are created, grown and marketed) and explores the underworld of fruits that are inaccessible, ignored and even forbidden in the Western world. An intrepid journalist and keen observer of nature -- both human and botanical -- Adam Leith Gollner has written a vivid tale of horticultural obsession.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 fruit mother flower fruit death and LIFE August 29, 2008
this book is a roller coaster of the highest highs and lowest lows.
> the mouthwatering magnificent to the toxic and terrible. specialized
> heirloom orchards to the metallic and oil-drenched fruit
> industrialization. it brings my juiciest desires and but also my
> paranoid pathologics. i have begun the tasting of life- and this
> fruitfully bound catalyst is an uncontrollable force. it so funny, and entertaing, terrifying and entrancing.
i have to say that I AM a fruit obsessee like the folks written about, and there still are endless exciting adventures and knowledge in here! not only a magnificent story to get lost in, but a wonderful resource if you want to start tasting the best fruits of your area, and the world!
Delicious August 27, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is such a great book. Gollner never takes his subject matter quite too seriously - a must if you're writing about a topic so obscure. His descriptions of the fruits he encounters are truly creative - he manages to weave the English language in such a way as to convey the impossible -the taste of exotic fruits to readers who've never heard of, much less sampled them. Without the haughty arrogance of the common food writer who scorns the tastes of the masses, Gollner makes the reader yearn for the fine, rare heirloom fruits that we know exist, yet have given up on finding. And he does this by bringing us into the world of those weird, devoted individuals who have devoted their lives to the pursuit of fruit.
This is an interesting, fulfilling book. Highly recommended.
 Do publishers have fact checkers any more? August 25, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I must admit that reading the first couple chapters puts you in the mood for your own fruit eating orgy! But then comes a two page synopsis of the history of the Universe per the New York Times fiction pages. Two stand out. That calculus was 'invented' by Arabs. i.e, Arabic numbers. They actually got all that math when they destroyed a very advanced civilization in India in the 12th century. That is not invention unless pillaging and destruction were brand new. The second was Jefferson and Washington being gentlemen farmers: Growing food for pleasure only. Does this mean that in 1790 they got into their Hummers and loaded up at Costco? There were several more of these and I stopped reading. I read to learn new things, and if an author can't be trusted with general facts what is he doing with the fruit arcana? All in all it felt like a teenage romp on someone else's dime.
Fruit Hunter August 8, 2008
Adam's Fruit Hunters is a delicious read. The book details his travels to Brazil, Borneo, Hawaii and other places where he met interesting characters and sampled exotic fruits which he describes in a mouth watering way. Other chapters of the book give the reader a glimpse into the marketing and politics of fruit.
Highly recommended read for fruit lovers everywhere!
-Yana
MU HWA HWA HWA HWA HA HA HA HA!!!! July 25, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
My husband is scared. I have turned into a fruit monster.
Purchasing this book after reading the NY Times review, my husband lovingly gave me this book thinking only of my newfound passion for gardening and my ever enduring foodie love. He had no idea he would create a fruit monster! (RAWR!!!)
After reading The Fruit Hunters, I have now become born again to the magic of fruits. Because of this book, I can never look or taste fruits in the same way again.
Whether Gollner is recanting his tales of "flop[ping] around like a spawning salmon," in back of a Thai rickshaw hastily speeding through crowded streets en route to the food market where he will delightfully ingest moon fruits, mangoes, rambutans, and other south Asian delights, or riding passenger to a eccentric fruit obsessive who drives as though "the asphalt was his enemy, jabbing at the gas pedal and the breaks like a tap-dancing circus bear," or explaining how the McIntosh apple was only discovered only after its namesake exhumed his beloved lover's body first, you will find yourself engrossed and often laughing...... out loud...... heartedly...... (In fact, after devouring this book after two days of intense page turning, I gave it to my husband to peruse. After he began reading it and laughing to himself, I asked him to read whatever passage he was on out loud to me. He refused. He said if he did he wouldn't be able to read the book fast enough!)
Perhaps after reading this book, you will endure the same fate as me, snuggling to bed with seed catalogs and fruit books by your bed stand, thawing to eat strangely shaped fruits frozen in distant lands. But it will be well worth it to come to know that solely through fruit that the world is so much more exciting, rich, and varied than you ever knew it be.
Get this book!!! Be not afraid of the fruit monster that lurks within us all. If anything, your taste buds will thank you.
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