Combining history and botany to discuss 15 flowers (orchids), author Hannickel pens a delightfully niche book about how orchids have touched so many important people and events in history. I especially liked the chapters about Chinese Empress Cixi (1835-1908) and her legacy of gardens and flowers, and Edmond Albius (1829-1880) who discovered how to hand fertilize vanilla orchids while enslaved as a 12year old Black boy in Madagascar. The ramifications of Albius's discovery are both distressing and sad, and i'll never look at a vanilla bean the same way again.

*read for 2023 WLA Literary Awards (published in 2022)