
The Plant Hunter
A Scientist's Quest for Nature's Next Medicines
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Narrated by:
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Cassandra Leah Quave
About this listen
The uplifting, adventure-filled memoir of one groundbreaking scientist’s quest to develop new ways to fight illness and disease through the healing powers of plants.
“A fascinating and deeply personal journey.” —Amy Stewart, author of Wicked Plants and The Drunken Botanist
Traveling by canoe, ATV, mule, airboat, and on foot, Dr. Cassandra Quave has conducted field research everywhere from the flooded forests of the remote Amazon to the isolated mountaintops in Albania and Kosovo—all in search of natural compounds, long-known to traditional healers, that could help save us all from the looming crisis of untreatable superbugs. Dr. Quave is a leading medical ethnobotanist—someone who identifies and studies plants that may be able to treat antimicrobial resistance and other threatening illnesses—helping to provide clues for the next generation of advanced medicines. And as a person born with multiple congenital defects of her skeletal system, she's done it all with just one leg. In The Plant Hunter, Dr. Quave weaves together science, botany, and memoir to tell us the extraordinary story of her own journey.
©2021 Cassandra Leah Quave (P)2021 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"Cassandra Quave takes us on a fascinating and deeply personal journey to seek out modern medicines from the botanical world. As a scientist she is scrappy and tenacious, and as a writer she is eloquent and disarmingly honest. Fans of Hope Jahren’s Lab Girl will devour this engrossing narrative about Quave’s quest for the next cure.”—Amy Stewart, bestselling author of The Drunken Botanist
“Quave’s fascinating story is full of insights with equal respect for traditional healing and ‘scientific’ medicine.”—Jonathan Drori, author of Around the World in 80 Plants
“This most remarkable book is overflowing with inspiration, delight and adventure, as Cassandra Quave brilliantly describes her search to understand nature’s healing power. Above all, Quave offers an intensely honest and personal story of a life filled with purpose, joy and challenges, which will no doubt influence a generation of young people seeking to serve the greater good, while reminding us all that we are inextricably connected to the Earth.”—Michael J. Balick, Co-Author of Plants, People and Culture: The Science of Ethnobotany
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Story
Karl Deisseroth has spent his life pursuing truths about the human mind, both as a renowned clinical psychiatrist and as a researcher creating and developing the revolutionary field of optogenetics, which uses light to help decipher the brain’s workings. In Projections, he combines his knowledge of the brain’s inner circuitry with a deep empathy for his patients to examine what mental illness reveals about the human mind and the origin of human feelings - how the broken can illuminate the unbroken.
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Authors, USE BETTER NARRATORS!!
- By aaron on 08-28-21
By: Karl Deisseroth
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How Stella Learned to Talk
- The Groundbreaking Story of the World's First Talking Dog
- By: Christina Hunger
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Gideon, Stella the Dog
- Length: 7 hrs
- Unabridged
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Story
An incredible, revolutionary true story, How Stella Learned to Talk is also a surprisingly simple guide to teaching your dog to talk from speech-language pathologist Christina Hunger, who has taught her dog, Stella, to communicate using simple paw-sized buttons associated with different words.
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Great mix of story, process and knowledge
- By C. J. Mc Collough on 05-12-21
By: Christina Hunger
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In the Middle Are the Horsemen
- By: Tik Maynard
- Narrated by: Tik Maynard
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2008, 26-year-old Tik Maynard faced a crossroads not unlike that of other young adults. A university graduate and modern pentathlete, he suffered both a career-ending injury and a painful breakup, leaving him suddenly adrift. The son of prominent Canadian equestrians, Maynard decided to spend the next year as a "working student." In the horse industry, working students aspire to become professional riders or trainers, and willingly trade labor for hands-on education.
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The journey of an inspiring Horseman
- By Kelley on 01-16-25
By: Tik Maynard
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The Gilded Edge
- Two Audacious Women and the Cyanide Love Triangle That Shook America
- By: Catherine Prendergast
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Nora May French and Carrie Sterling arrive at Carmel-by-the-Sea at the turn of the twentieth century with dramatically different ambitions. Nora, a stunning, brilliant, impulsive writer in her early twenties, seeks artistic recognition and Bohemian refuge among the most celebrated counter-culturalists of the era. Carrie, long-suffering wife of real estate developer George Sterling, wants the opposite: a semblance of the stability she thought her advantageous marriage would offer, threatened now that her philandering husband has taken to writing poetry.
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Why?
- By UMICHReader on 01-18-22
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Sleeping with Strangers
- How the Movies Shaped Desire
- By: David Thomson
- Narrated by: David Thomson
- Length: 17 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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In this wholly original work of film criticism, David Thomson, celebrated author of The Biographical Dictionary of Film, probes the many ways in which sexuality has shaped the movies - and the ways in which the movies have shaped sexuality.
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Another good read from David Thomson
- By Boxing Fan on 07-23-23
By: David Thomson
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In Pursuit of Disobedient Women
- A Memoir of Love, Rebellion, and Family, Far Away
- By: Dionne Searcey
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2015, Dionne Searcey was covering the economy for The New York Times, living in Brooklyn with her husband and three young children. Saddled with the demands of a dual-career household and motherhood in an urban setting, her life was in a rut. She decided to pursue a job as the paper’s West Africa bureau chief, an amazing but daunting opportunity to cover a swath of territory encompassing two dozen countries and 500 million people. Landing with her family in Dakar, Senegal, she quickly found their lives turned upside-down as they struggled to figure out their place.
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A journalist's memoir
- By still reading on 07-26-20
By: Dionne Searcey
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A Place in the World
- Finding the Meaning of Home
- By: Frances Mayes
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Though Frances Mayes is known for her travels, she has always sought a sense of home wherever she goes. In this poetic testament to the power of place in our lives, Mayes reflects on the idea of home, from the earliest imprint of four walls to the startling discoveries of feeling the strange ease of homes abroad, friends’ homes, and even momentary homes that spark desires for other lives. From her travels across Italy to the American South, France, and Mexico, Mayes examines the connective tissue among them through the homes she’s inhabited.
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Lovely meditation on the meaning of home
- By Pamela F Roper on 02-19-23
By: Frances Mayes
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Made in China
- A Memoir of Love and Labor
- By: Anna Qu
- Narrated by: Catherine Ho
- Length: 5 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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As a teen, Anna Qu is sent by her mother to work in her family’s garment factory in Queens. At home, she is treated as a maid and suffers punishment for doing her homework at night. Her mother wants to teach her a lesson: She is Chinese, not American, and such is their tough path in their new country. But instead of acquiescing, Qu alerts the Office of Children and Family Services, an act with consequences that impact the rest of her life.
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Lovely book, can be a hard read mentally
- By Luna on 07-26-23
By: Anna Qu
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Honey and Venom
- Confessions of an Urban Beekeeper
- By: Andrew Coté
- Narrated by: Andrew Coté
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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From the humble drone to the fittingly named worker to the queen herself - who is more a slave than a monarch - the hive world, Andrew Coté reveals, is full of strivers and slackers, givers and takers, and even some insect promiscuity (startlingly similar to the prickly human variety). Written with Coté’s trademark humor, acumen, and a healthy dose of charm, Honey and Venom illuminates the obscure culture of New York City “beeks” and the biology of the bees themselves for both casual readers and bee enthusiasts.
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Ego gets in the way
- By Gregory Lehman on 10-12-22
By: Andrew Coté
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The Habit of Rivers
- Reflections on Trout Streams and Fly Fishing
- By: Ted Leeson, John Gierach - foreword
- Narrated by: Allan Robertson
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Originally published in 1994, this book was a fly-fishing phenomenon in the way Howell Raines' Fly Fishing Through the Mid-Life Crisis was. Taking his fishing hobby to near metaphysical levels, Ted Leeson tells about his passions: rivers, trout, and fly fishing. With wry humor and rare insight, he explores questions that engage most fishermen: What is it about rivers that draws us so irresistibly, and why does fly fishing seem such an aptly suited response?
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Greatest Book I've Ever Listened To.
- By Travis on 03-17-18
By: Ted Leeson, and others
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On the Trail of the Serpent
- The Epic Hunt for the Bikini Killer
- By: Richard Neville, Julie Clarke
- Narrated by: Homer Todiwala
- Length: 12 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Charles Sobhraj remains one of the world's great con men, and as a serial killer, the story of his life and capture endures as legend. Born in Vietnam to a Vietnamese mother and Indian father, Sobhraj grew up deprived of a sense of identity, moving to France before being imprisoned and stripped of his multiple nationalities.
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EXHILARATING
- By Jeffrey W. Rudisel on 05-01-21
By: Richard Neville, and others
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Denali
- A Man, A Dog, and the Friendship of a Lifetime
- By: Ben Moon
- Narrated by: Ben Moon
- Length: 7 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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When Ben Moon moved from the Midwest to Oregon, he hadn’t planned on getting a dog. But when he first met the soulful gaze of a rescue pup in a shelter, Ben instantly felt a connection, and his friendship with Denali was born. The two of them set out on the road together, on an adventure that would take them across the American west and through some of the best years of their lives. But when Ben was diagnosed with colorectal cancer at age 29, he faced a difficult battle with the disease, and Denali never once left his side until they were back out surfing and climbing crags.
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Definitely added to my list of favorites!
- By elissa on 01-30-20
By: Ben Moon
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London's Number One Dog-Walking Agency
- A Memoir
- By: Kate MacDougall
- Narrated by: Anna Popplewell
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2006, Kate MacDougall was working a safe but dull job at the venerable auction house Sotheby’s in London. After a clumsy accident nearly destroyed a precious piece of art, she quit Sotheby’s and set up her own dog-walking company. Kate knew little about dogs and nothing about business, and no one thought being a professional dog walker was a good use of her university degree. Nevertheless, Kate embarked upon an entirely new and very much improvised career walking some of the city’s many pampered pooches, branding her company "London's Number One Dog Walking Agency".
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Entertaining light read
- By Amy D. on 07-10-21
By: Kate MacDougall
Great science autobiography
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plants will save us
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Inspiring
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Deeply important, and very understandable
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Wonderful
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Excellent!
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Hardly any ethnobotany content
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