Seeds of Wealth: Four Plants That Made Men Rich

Following the widely celebrated Seeds of Change (1985) comes Seeds of Wealth, a collection of four elegant essays focusing on the economic and cultural consequences of the exploitation of timber, tobacco, rubber, and the wine grape. These cash crops have bound together trade relations for the past three centuries and have had a profound if little noted effect on our world. As early as Shakespeare's time, timber quantities in England had become deficient, promoting the use of coal and leading…