Introduction, pp. i-xxv.

1. Pollan says that he is writing this book from ______________________ point of view. How does the world look from _____________________ point of view? What do __________ look for and/or want from the world? How does "plant-o-centric" world looks like? How it differs from anthropocentric world of humans? How different and/or similar are our worlds?
2. Pollan argues that we can look at the genome of plants and analyze it as being produced by evolutionary history (co-existence/co-dependence with non-human environment) as much as they are produced by cultural history. What does he mean by the term "cultural history" of plants? Do plants like us have values or ideas?
3. Plants are known to manufacture extremely complex and powerful chemical substances. Why do plants bother to devise the recipes for so many complex molecules and then expend the energy needed to maintain them? What plants did get in return for making particular chemicals that other species are unable to produce?
4. What does Pollan mean when he says that "plants can make get us to move and think for them" (p. xx). Where is the plant power or "flower power" comes from?
5. Why does Pollan argue that "in the years since Darwin published The Origin of Species the crisp conceptual line that divided artificial from natural selection has blurred." (p.xxii) Who and why had blurred this line?

Desire: Sweetness; Plants: The Apple, pp. 3-58.

1. Why people had failed to domesticate oak? Why has oak showed so little interest in us?
2. What kind of business Chapman operated in the new territories? How did his "chain of nurseries" operate? What was the prime use of apples in the Chapman’s time? When and how the notion of apple as bearer of health and wholesomeness was invented?
3. Where did the apple as a species originate from? Who had invented the technique of grafting?
4. Sugar in North America was not available until late 18^th century. What was the source of sweetness of Native Americans? How did early settlers satisfy their sense of sweetness? Why is sweetness so pleasurable to us? Why have North Europeans assumed that Eve seduced Adam with an apple? How did the sense of sweetness of the early settlers differed from our sense of sweetness? What do we mean then we say "sweet" or "sugary"?
5. How did plants use the sense of sweetness in a process of evolution?
6. Describe the socio-natural history of apple (the changes of meaning/values, uses and qualities of the apple as fruit and a plant since the colonial times). See 10/30 handout.

Desire: Intoxication; Plant Marijuana, pp. 111-179.

1. How and why do plants develop capacities to produce intoxicating other species substances? What purpose from plant’s point of view do intoxicating substances serve?
2. What impact did the drug war have on marijuana plant? (See the 11/04 handout).
3. How universal is the desire for conscious changing among humans? Why the Eskimos the only known culture in the world had been not using psychoactive plants?
4. Pollan argues that psychoactive plants at some periods of time can be prohibited, while at the others - tolerated and accepted. This is what had happened to attitudes towards marijuana in this country (p. 140-141). What social functions do the drug prohibitions serve?
5. Why do humans and animals continue to use intoxicating plants despite the fact that they are dangerous because they make us more accident prone, more vulnerable to predators, and less likely to attend to their offspring? How psychoactive plants can be useful to us and animals?

Desire: Control; Plant: The Potato, pp. 183-238.

1. Pollan argues that every "gardener <...> eventually learns that every advance in control of the garden is also an invitation to a new disorder" (p. 185). What does he mean by "a new disorder"? Could you provide an example of such "new disorder"?
2. What impact does the agriculture have on the ecosystem? What does Pollan mean when he argues that "agriculture is brutally reductive" (p. 185)?
3. What is the most significant drawback of the agriculture based on monoculture? Use an example of the 1840s Irish famine to illustrate it.
4. Where did the first experiments in plant domestication occur?
5. Why does Pollan call genetic engineering a qualitatively new step in reordering the nature ("desire to control")? How is the genetic engineering similar and/or different from process of plant selection that humans practiced for the last 10,000 years? How precise are current methods of genetic engineering?
6. How was the transgenic potato New Leaf ™ created? What is the New Leaf ™ designed to do to the Colorado beetle? How is the New Leaf ™ classified by the Environmental Protection Agency?
7. Describe and compare three types of desires of control of potato described by Pollan: the chemical control, the genetic control and biological control in terms of degree of control enabling us to exercise over the nature, their benefits and their limitations (see 11/04 handout).