Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation

Andrea Wulf

mars 2011 · Penguin Random House Audio · Berättare: Antonia Bath

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A groundbreaking look at the Founding Fathers and their obsession with gardening, agriculture, and botany by the author of Magnificent Rebels and New York Times bestseller The Invention of Nature. • “Illuminating and engrossing.” —The New York Times Book Review

For the Founding Fathers, gardening, agriculture, and botany were elemental passions: a conjoined interest as deeply ingrained in their characters as the battle for liberty and a belief in the greatness of their new nation.

Founding Gardeners is an exploration of that obsession, telling the story of the revolutionary generation from the unique perspective of their lives as gardeners, plant hobbyists, and farmers. Acclaimed historian Andrea Wulf describes how George Washington wrote letters to his estate manager even as British warships gathered off Staten Island; how a tour of English gardens renewed Thomas Jefferson’s and John Adams’s faith in their fledgling nation; and why James Madison is the forgotten father of environmentalism. Through these and other stories, Wulf reveals a fresh, nuanced portrait of the men who created our nation.

Om författaren

Andrea Wulf was born in India and moved to Germany as a child. She lives in London, where she trained as a design historian at the Royal College of Art. She is the author of The Invention of Nature, Chasing Venus, Founding Gardeners, and The Brother Gardeners, which was longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and awarded the American Horticultural Society Book Award. She has written for the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times. She appears regularly on radio and TV, and in 2014 copresented British Gardens in Time, a four-part series on BBC television.

Antonia Bath is an English actor, singer, and voice-over artist. She graduated from UCLA’s School of Theatre Film and Television and currently lives in Topanga Canyon, California. Bath has performed at Cirque Bezerk, the Geffen Playhouse, the Falcon Theatre, and various CBGBs. Sokai Gakkai International in Japan hired Ms. Bath to narrate a series of photo essays for their president Daisaku Ikeda. Her voice is considered a match for Hermione Granger's in the Harry Potter franchise.