The poppy : a cultural history from ancient Egypt to Flanders fields to Afghanistan / Nicholas J. Saunders.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Saunders, Nicholas J., author.

Contributor:

Royal British Legion.

Edward Potts Cheyney Memorial Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Opium poppy--History.

Opium poppy.

Plants--Symbolic aspects.

Plants.

History.

Physical Description:

x, 301 pages, 8 pages of unnumbered plates : color illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

London : Oneworld, 2013.

Summary:

An unforgettable history on an unforgettable flower... Every year, eighty million red paper and plastic poppies are distributed around the world, carrying their message to remember and honour the dead. The lightest of petals bears the heaviest of burdens. Yet, each Remembrance Poppy should also remind us of our deep-rooted connection to the past and to the natural world. We disturb the earth for many reasons - foremost to build somewhere to live, to grow plants for food and to bury our dead. Life and death flourish in the churning of soil, and it is in such places that poppies thrive - on the boundary between existence and extinction. From the wheat fields of antiquity to the battlefields of the Somme and Helmand, poppies have affected us as much as we have affected them. - The Poppy Book jacket.

Contents:

1.Genesis

2.The Flower of Forgetfulness

3.Opium Dreams

4.Barbed-wire Battlefields

5.The Poppy Lady

6.Souvenir of War

7.The White Poppy

8.The Narcotic Grasp on Helmand

9.The Living Legacy.

Notes:

Published in association with the Royal British Legion.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 269-290) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Edward Potts Cheyney Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

9781851687053

185168705X

OCLC:

862054195

Publisher Number:

99955532874