| 
| Author: Adam Leith Gollner
Publisher: Scribner
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
Buy New: $14.50
You Save: $10.50 (42%)
New (36) Used (11) from $12.50
Avg. Customer Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 44591
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
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Hardcover with Dust Jacket, never been read, minor shelf wear, In Stock and ready to ship
|
| Customer Reviews:
 Fruit Hunter August 8, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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
4 out of 4 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.
 A fascinating read. July 14, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I found this book not only informative but the prose was exquisite and made a big subject readable and enjoyable and hungry for fruit.
Excellent plant enthusiast summer read July 10, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I've been growing tropical fruit for over ten years and have read many books on the subject. When I ran across the Fruit Hunters from a NYTimes article I knew I just had to read this book. I'm glad I did. Its well worth reading this book for not only the knowledge but the entertainment value. The Author throws out many factoids and interesting stories in this book. Not only are the fruits interesting but the people who grow and pursue the fruits are fascinating. I highly recommend this book. The tagline "A Story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce, and OBSESSION" is perfect for this. Get it.
You'll want to hop on a plane to Borneo July 2, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Journalist Gollner finds endless summer in his travels around the world seeking strange and luscious fruit at the very peak of quality. Alas for the rest of us, the best is always local, but Gollner shares his experiences so vividly it's almost like being there. Almost.
Check out his description of the miracle fruit, which turns sour flavors sweet, and has, incidentally, done wonders for the sales of this little berry:
"Where at first I could barely lick the puckeringly tart African lemon without wincing, now I'm gulping it down, licking up the juice on my chin. Even the bits on my teeth are ecstatically sweet, like liquefied filaments of pure joy. My head is swimming. Neurons never-before activated are firing up my central cortex. I greedily eat up the whole lemon, detecting hints of crystallized grapes and berries. While it isn't exactly 12345 Center of the Sun Avenue, it's definitely psychedelic."
The charm of Gollner's debut isn't just his sensuous, hip and funny writing style, or the infectious enthusiasm that will have readers longing to race off to Borneo for a soccer-ball sized tarap, which tastes like a "fully constructed dessert," or a mangosteen or a chempedak or, Borneo's most notorious fruit, the durian, a custardy delicacy with a smell so noxious a Manhattan tasting party emptied the building.
No, there's more. Gollner ferrets out the real fruit hunters, those who have dedicated their lives to fruits. These are an odd and varied bunch, from seriously fanatical scientists and growers to those who believe a pure fruit diet will lead to Nirvana, super wealthy hobbyists who indulge their passion by smuggling, and schemers who inject apples with grape flavor to produce grapples. The fruit world is apparently rife with talented nuts.
Gollner gets behind the politics of fruit - the buzz around miracle fruit's potential in the sweetener market and the sudden FDA ban that brought it all to naught; the reasons, from destructive pests to protectionism, that many fruits are banned from our borders, and the origin of the banana republic.
He delves into the marketing and shipping and consequent dearth of quality in our supermarket fruit; he explores health-giving properties and legends; he introduces varieties we never could even imagine like the lady fruit, which grows only in the Seychelles, has oversized parts which look like human genitalia and takes 7 years to produce a mature fruit.
He explores the world of fruit crime, from smuggling to money laundering, and the role of humans in producing the finest fruits. Fruit biology, history, even fruit intelligence, weaves through this entertaining, informative, even riveting narrative. Readers will look forward to tagging along on Gollner's next adventure.
|
|
|
