A Rum Affair: A True Story of Botanical Fraud

A true story of a Scottish isle, an eminent professor, a lie, and an amateur botanist who saw the truth, by the author of Antisemitism Wars.

In the 1940s, the eminent British botanist John Heslop Harrison proposed a controversial theory: that vegetation on the islands off the west coast of Scotland had survived the last Ice Age. His premise flew in the face of what most botanists believed—that no plants had survived the 10,000-year period of extreme cold. But Heslop Harrison had proof: the ...