Holland flowering

Growing tulip bulbs on the moon, and a tulip shaped island in the North Sea. Frederick Ruysch's wunderkammer and contemporary bloemencorsos. A Dutch-Chinese billionaire, aka the Orchid King, recreates a 'Dutch' town in northeast China complete with a replica of Amsterdam's central station and the International Court of Justice. A retired grower recalls a life in flowers, from the Second World War to the European Union. Dutch development policies in Ethiopia today and its former civilizing mission in Java. Auctions, cooperatives, networking, commodity culture, Dutch masculinity, and globalization. These are some of the imaginaries, themes, curious details, and perspectives you will encounter in this book. All of them pivot around Dutch flower culture today and in the Dutch Golden Age, and directly or indirectly link to Aalsmeer's flower auction, the world's largest, located not far from Amsterdam.

'William Blake saw the universe in a grain of sand; Andrew Gebhardt finds it in a tulip's bloom. Fluidly written, deeply researched, and full of surprising turns, this book is about so much more than flowers. Highly recommended.' - Dr. Christopher Ryan, co-author of New York Times best seller Sex at Dawn

'Andrew Gebhardt approaches that mysterious, compelling beauty, the tulip - over which fortunes have been built and ruined, and every art of the gardener, poet and most especially the painter lavished - through a varied and revealing set of lenses: economics, cultural studies, horticultural practice, and the history of everything from global trading to aesthetics and auctions, and how flowers became so deeply tied to our most significant occasions. An eye-opening, expansive book.' - Mark Doty, author of Still Life with Oysters and Lemon, and winner of the National Book Award, the T.S. Eliot Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize

'Blossoming forth in all sorts of unexpected directions, Holland Flowering's petals open out to reflect and encompass an entire world, one well beyond mere flowers: our world.' - Lawrence Weschler, winner of National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism, and director emeritus, New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU