Tea Lover's Treasury

Rating:
Summary: Very Informative Tea Book
Review: I read this book cover to cover and found it to be a GREAT tea book! Although it covers a broad range of tea topics, it covers each of them very well. I usually don't like history but found the author's descriptions and stories of what happened long ago fascinating. I have re-read them many times, each time learning somethings new. Mr. Pratt provides a Chronology of Tea Fortunes in the back of the book which is an extremely valuable reference, helping me keep track of what happened when. The author covers many other tea subjects, too, including types of tea, tea trade, tea things, etc. but doesn't use recipes to fill up the pages. It is all very informative. The only thing that could have made the book better is a more up-to-date reference list in the back. Most of the books listed here are out of print.

I have also read the New Tea Lover's Treasury by the same author but found the "old" one to be a better value. There isn't much additional information in the new book and a lot of good stuff in the old version was omitted. For example, the chronology (historic time line) is completely omitted as is the coverage of the tea trade. The Bibliography of Tea Books in the new edition is more extensive, but here again most of the books listed are out of print.