The Herbal Bookworm

HERBAL BOOK REVIEWS
by
Jonathan Treasure


"I never read the books I review - it prejudices a man so" Rev. Sydney Smith


"The book of my enemy has been remaindered. And I rejoice..." Clive James


CONTENTS









INTRODUCTION


Book reviewers can be divided into batchers
(who review several books at a time ),
betchers ('Betcher I could have written it better'),
bitchers, botchers and butchers.


Welcome to The Herbal Bookworm. This is simply a few pages of reviews of books (and some software) about medicinal herbs. These are written primarily for herb folk and all written by me, if not for me. You can decide for yourself whether I am a batcher, betcher, bitcher, botcher or butcher. I suspect a tad of all may be involved. Some of the reviews have been published elsewhere, new ones will be added from time to time.

Reviews on Herbal Bookworm tend to be Long Rambles, which will certainly be tedious for many readers - they are mainly an excuse for me to sound off at greater length than most publishers allow in a journal with the notable exception of Medical Herbalism. Most of the reviews here will probably be of interest only to students or practitioners of some variety of herbalism or natural medicine rather than to the general reader who may prefer to skip straight to the Readers page. For those seeking coverage of more titles in less depth, there is a useful site of short reviews compiled by herbalist Robyn Klein, also published as Robyn's Recommended Reading.

The Readers Page has some Top Ten charts of books that herbalists themselves consider their favourites, as well as a "stinkers" list, and a visitors poll for popular herb books to which all visitors to this site are invited to submit entries of their own favourite herb book.

What else can I say, other than that this is probably one of the more opinionated, lop sided, cranky and downright slanderous herb sites of minimal import.... but it keeps me out of trouble when its too cold, wet and dark to go play in the woods. All opinions, errors, omissions and libels are obviously mine. There is no list of my favourite links since several herb pages contain excellent jump lists, but wherever appropriate external links have been included at the end of the reviews.

Notes on spelling: Winston Churchill once said that England and America are divided by a common language. Well, after a few years as a Brit living on the West Coast all I can say is that I have a full blown case of linguo-schizophrenia. Americans pronounce herbs as "urbs", or even "urrebs" - the point being that the "h" is silent. Hence one is AN urbalist here rather than A herbalist from England. The English however tend not to pronounce the letter "r" , so that "herbs" is pronounced more as "hayubs". All this is compounded by the fact that I lived in East and North London for twenty years, where the "aitch" is commonly dropped not only by pure Cockneys, but by many folk in the area (whether in the interests of enhancing communication or to pretend that they are more proletarian than is truly the case). Without wanting to bore the reader, I am saying that spelling on this site will be variable. Please do not complain. Generally I still use Anglo rather than American forms if only because my spell-checker grew that way. To be honest, I prefer much American spelling, especially where dipthongs are avoided as in o/estrogen, ha/emorrhoids etcetera, if only because dipthongs should be written with a ligature between the two letters, an elementary typographical feat notably beyond modern word processors and most postscript fonts. If you can't do it properly, don't bother is a useful principle.

Publishers and authors are invited to send material for review. I cannot guarantee that books sent will be reviewed but they will be listed under Books Received. For details, and any feedback or comment, email jonathan treasure

Thanks to BBEdit 4.02 for solving HTML headaches, to artist Jack Ochoa for the main images on contents and readers pages courtesy of the Virtual Cafe, to Apple Mac (still crazy after all these years), to Owen and Tom for the reasons to go on, and above all to the plants themselves - source of wisdom and healing.

Browser Note - This site is best viewed with Netscape 3.x, set to full screen width with a sans serif face. For some reason (sic) it does not look great in the AOL browser, and it will not work well in Lynx - sorry. Microsoft Explorer - well how would I know ? And er, use the icons to navigate. Right pointing arrows are always to external links.






BOOKS RECEIVED

Bookworm is updating at last. Thankyou for your patience, herbal book lovers.
Winter is back and the Bookworm is getting busy again. See the new three part review of Herbs for Kids. Also in progress are reviews of the following

  • Matthew Wood The Book of Herbal Wisdom North Atlantic
  • Graeme Tobyn Culpeper's Medicine Element


The following have been received with thanks from the publishers and/or authors:

  • Varro Tyler The Honest Herbal & Herbs of Choice Haworth Press
  • James Duke The Green Pharmacy Rodale
  • Thomas Bartram Encyclopedia of Herbal Medicine Grace
  • Maggie Davis Glory to the Flowers Heartsong Books
  • Christopher Hedley & Non Shaw Herbal Remedies Parragon
  • Paul Bergner The Healing Power of Ginseng/Minerals etc (Series) Prima
  • Amanda McQuade Crawford Herbal Remedies for Women Prima
  • Aviva Jill Romm The Natural Pregnancy Book Crossing Press




Last Updated Jan 1st 1998,   Visit number  8374