We bought this on the strength of Wulf's superb biography of Alexander Von Humboldt, and her very entertaining book about the passage of Venus. But this was disappointing. The subtitle promised a discussion of empire and colonialism, which did appear, a bit, at the end, but not really thoughtfully or in depth. The details about the plants themselves were lacking, teasing us with mentions of violent disagreements carried out in the Proceedings of the Royal Society but not actually laying out the nature of the botanical disagreements. Most of the book focused on the relationships of the plant-collectors themselves--and that was, to be fair, thoroughly researched and supported with lots of entertainingly spelled quotations from letters and reminiscences. But, overall, these bits of the focus just weren't interesting enough to hold our attention. We kept putting the book down for a week at a time, and I found myself trying to make the bits about Joseph Banks more interesting by remembering how Patrick O'Brian had him as the head of Britain's Napoleonic-era spy activities in the the Aubrey and Maturin books. But no hint of those pursuits enlivened this book, and in the end it was a well-researched slog.