The Big, Bad Book of Botany

The deadliest plants on Earth do not look dangerous. That is rather the point of them. In The Big, Bad Book of Botany, Michael Largo, a writer best known for cataloguing the ways people die, turns his attention to the green world and finds it every bit as murderous, medicinal, and strange as the human one.

From a high-country high to a high-class high tea, the book presents the secret powers that make plants essential to human survival and occasionally fatal to it. The calming cup of chamomile and the pain-blocking morphine poppy share these pages with the most poisonous plants ever catalogued, because humankind has always turned to flora for food, medicine, and mind-altering experiences, and the plants have always collected their fee.

The Wall Street Journal called it a fascinating journey through the world of plants, from the beneficial to the deadly, which is the correct order to read it in. Start with the ones that heal you. Work your way toward the ones that would rather not be touched.

This is the world's most fascinating flora as only the author of Final Exits would write it: illustrated, encyclopedic, and honest about the fact that the garden has never entirely been on our side.