Gardens Through History: Nature Perfected

Rating:
Summary: Perfect for armchair gardeners and amateur historians
Review: A weighty tome(not one you can easily read in the bath or on the train), this book is a superb source book for the student of garden history. It is lavishly illustrated with sumptuous but relevant pictures. It has the advantage over many garden history books in that it devotes space to Ancient Greek, Roman and Egyptian gardens - periods usually skimped over or skipped entirely, giving the impression that academic interest begins with the gardens of the Italian Renaissance. There is an excellent bibliograpy and illustrations are fully credited.

The main problem is the text layout. Text is split on each page into two ragged edge columns, leading to visual break up of sentences and lots of hyphens! This is distracting to the eye and tiring to read. A large margin for captions compounds the problem, making the text columns even narrower. A single column of fully justified text would make the pages less fussy visually and thus easier to read.

A secondary problem, occasioned by the sheer weight of informatin, is that this book will always be (to me, at least) a reference book. There is just too much information, and the book is too heavy and cumbersome, to make it one to actually sit down and read for the pleasure of doing to.

Rating:
Summary: The Curate's Egg
Review: A weighty tome(not one you can easily read in the bath or on the train), this book is a superb source book for the student of garden history. It is lavishly illustrated with sumptuous but relevant pictures. It has the advantage over many garden history books in that it devotes space to Ancient Greek, Roman and Egyptian gardens - periods usually skimped over or skipped entirely, giving the impression that academic interest begins with the gardens of the Italian Renaissance. There is an excellent bibliograpy and illustrations are fully credited.

The main problem is the text layout. Text is split on each page into two ragged edge columns, leading to visual break up of sentences and lots of hyphens! This is distracting to the eye and tiring to read. A large margin for captions compounds the problem, making the text columns even narrower. A single column of fully justified text would make the pages less fussy visually and thus easier to read.

A secondary problem, occasioned by the sheer weight of informatin, is that this book will always be (to me, at least) a reference book. There is just too much information, and the book is too heavy and cumbersome, to make it one to actually sit down and read for the pleasure of doing to.

Rating:
Summary: Perfect for armchair gardeners and amateur historians
Review: This is a fascinating book to sit down and read or just to leaf through and enjoy the pictures. And it is a valuable reference on gardening hstory as well.