The description "this is the most comprehensive book on the trees of Canada and the northern United States ever published" may well be true. I am always pleasantly surprised to open this book. A handy-sized reference that balances high quality colour photographs, line drawings and well written text.

The 5th edition has seen a complete revision of the illustrations, which all were replaced by a better grade of line-drawings. This makes for a much more likable book.

As the dollar drops against the euro, books from Europe are getting ever more expensive, and Linden Publishing must have felt it was time to offer a cheap alternative to the wellknown "Tropical Timber Atlas, Volume I - Africa" (1987), the book by the joint timber trade on 83 African commercial timbers. As far as price and printing quality are concerned this was a success, a sturdy hardback at a much handier size, lovely glossy paper, offering distribution maps and color pictures at a nice size. This is a slick looking book! This book treats 90 African woods, with two (facing) pages per species, arranged by trade name. Unfortunately by content it is quite a step down from the earlier book. The names are quite a mess. Anybody looking for African blackwood either has to know that the author is German and that the German trade name is Grenadill or has to use the index. Botanical names are treated most cavalierly, with perhaps its worst in "Gnophyllum giganteum of the family Meliaceae": it took me something like a day to figure out that this was supposed to be "Ganophyllum giganteum of the family Sapindaceae". Obsolete names abound, as do typos. I did not look too closely at the text after finding some items that turned my stomach. Much of the value of a book like this is in the pictures, and there are a few nice ones, but they appear the exception. Too many are useless, when it comes to giving an impression of what the wood looks like; a few are plain wrong (in this respect this book may be a step up from "World Woods in Color", but not a big step). Overall this is an attractive looking book, but users should be aware that no reliance whatsoever is to be placed on anything in this volume without a careful check against a real book.

The Timber Press has been putting out lavishly printed volumes (full color on glossy paper) for awhile now. With this book they appear to have lifted the publishing of fine books to a new level. They not only found a group of people dedicated to their subject and to fine photography who captured the saillant features in almost invariably excellent pictures, but also managed to find a layout to do these pictures full justice. Basically (almost) every maple species (or subspecies) has two pages devoted to it (or a multiple of that): a page of text and a page of pictures. Where more pages are devoted to a single maple sometimes a full page is devoted to a single picture, but this is the exception. Usually there are several pictures per page with large pictures of habit and smaller pictures of detail. The effect is quite splendid. A quick browse through the text reveals nothing out of place, with a recent classification being followed, although I suspect that a really close look will show up nitpickingly small errors. All in all this is really magnificent maple book, with a considerable wow!-factor.

This is a beautifully printed book, in the lavish style that has become the mark of the Timber Press. The general impression is that this is a superior work of its kind, and likely this book will be a big hit with somebody looking for an all-inclusive encyclopedia with very brief entries on tropical gardening plants. The pictures appear to be of a very good quality, although it is hard to be sure given their small size (The pictures are big enough to escape being itty-bitty sized, but not by much).

This contains the same information as the three books (PROSEA VOL 5(1-3)), plus some additional color pictures and a ID-facility.

This book(let) has much to commend it. It is excellently printed on glossy paper. Picture quality generally is excellent. The text is neatly organized, with botanical names properly written (even synonyms provided where necessary, in footnotes).

Still, it feels like something is missing. Maybe it is that I would expect a book(let) that focuses on 44 species to offer extensive pictorial coverage. Ususally a book will have many species with few pictures each or few species with many pictures each (or at least full-sized ones). Maybe it is the fact that although the title promises "shrubs" the plants covered are all over the place (including two Cacti, one Yucca, many trees and even a "perennial shrub" on p84).

There does appear to be nothing really wrong here (disregarding the allegation that Ephedra has "fruit") and it is a really nice book(let), but still somewhat unsatisfying.

This guide book devotes a page to each species treated, with half the page taken up by a color picture of a flowering or fruiting specimen of the species in question. On the same page some data are given. Arranged by family (look for Leguminosae under Fabaceae, Buddleja under Loganiaceae, etc). Picture quality varies from pretty decent to quite good, although it is noticeable that a curious grid tends to be visible in the background (a digital camera?). Some pictures are a little overexposed. Occasionally the composition could be better (sometimes a lot better). Text seems unremarkable, but the choice to include author citations in the botanical names has not been followed up by doing this properly (needs a lot of work). Synonyms are provided. The "Trees" in the title should be taken to include a palm; the "Shrubs" is meant in the widest possible sense (including subshrubs and smaller stuff) and this goes for "Cacti" too (= "succulents"). Printing quality is just short of excellent. All in all this is OK, but unremarkable.

The title is misleading, since this book has nothing to do with scented wood. Its subtitle "Wood and Woodworking in the Bible" is a lot more accurate but still a bit off. This is a book about the Bible and the plants in it, with an emphasis on wood. It consists of a contemplative text on the Bible (p7-83), a pretty extensive treatment of plant names in the Bible (p99-241), a brief treatment on non-Biblical trees and shrubs in Palestine (p243-255), an even briefer treatment of the appropriate woodworking tools (p257-266) and a mysterious conclusion (p267-275).

In a way this is quite intriguing. This is a print-on-demand book at a Christian publisher, which means that anybody who fancies himself a writer and who compiles a book on something Christian can have a book in print, without an editor getting involved. A book on the plants in the Bible by somebody who feels passionately on the topic but whose expertise is in none of the several fields involved seems like a disaster waiting to happen. Against this background this is quite a good book, free of disaster. Since I well know where the errors are likely to be in a book of this kind I looked for them, and indeed they are there. But not nearly as many of them as there might be. The author certainly did a fair bit of homework and avoided most of the likely pitfalls. In its way this is a quite a commendable book.

Nevertheless this is a book with a narrow focus, without any illustrations, with its due share of errors and with a printing quality that is only average. Likely it will be nowhere near a match for Nigel Hepper's "Planting a Bible Garden" when it comes to popular appeal.

The Timber Press has been publishing gardening books for quite a few years now and appears quite devoted to turning out good-looking books. This striving for perfection is not limited to looks only but includes content: the Timber Press is perhaps the only publishing company to get the "hybrid sign" right (i.e. following the ICBN). In this book they also follow recent developments in taxonomy as concerns recent reassignments as to family.

It is clear that this devoted publishing company found an author devoted to making good-looking photographs and the result is a stunning book, that will be treasured by anyone who cares about trees. It is as close to a real life viewing of the trees as I ever experienced.

This book will look superb on a coffee table or on a reference shelf. It will make a great gift to just about anybody. Let's hope this splendid overview of a neglected aspect of trees is not an incident but a promise of many other beautiful books to come.