![]() ![]() “Orlean’s snapshot-vivid, pitch-perfect prose. an engrossing journey of theft, hatred, greed, jealousy, madness, and backstabbing.” - Los Angeles Times #The orchid thief fullThe Orchid Thief shows gifts in full bloom.” - The New York Times Book Review “Stylishly written, whimsical yet sophisticated, quirkily detailed and full of empathy. That passion is captured with singular vision in The Orchid Thief, a once-in-a-lifetime story by one of our most original journalists. Ultimately, however, Susan Orlean's book is about passion itself, and the amazing lengths to which people will go to gratify it. There is something fascinating or funny or truly bizarre on every page of The Orchid Thief: the story of how the head of a famous Seminole chief came to be displayed in the front window of a local pharmacy or how seven hundred iguanas were smuggled into Florida or the case of the only known extraterrestrial plant crime. Along the way, Orlean learned the history of orchid collecting, discovered an odd pattern of plant crimes in Florida, and spent time with Laroche's partners, a tribe of Seminole Indians who are still at war with the United States. New Yorker writer Susan Orlean followed Laroche through swamps and into the eccentric world of Florida's orchid collectors, a subculture of aristocrats, fanatics, and smugglers whose obsession with plants is all-consuming. The result is a tale that is strange, compelling, and hilarious. After he was caught in the act, Laroche set off one of the oddest legal controversies in recent memory, which brought together environmentalists, Native Amer-ican activists, and devoted orchid collectors. Laroche had planned to clone the orchids and then sell them for a small fortune to impassioned collectors. In 1994, Laroche and three Seminole Indians were arrested with rare orchids they had stolen from a wild swamp in south Florida that is filled with some of the world's most extraordinary plants and trees. In Susan Orlean's mesmerizing true story of beauty and obsession is John Laroche, a renegade plant dealer and sharply handsome guy, in spite of the fact that he is missing his front teeth and has the posture of al dente spaghetti. ![]()
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