Customer Reviews

Apples

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Browning's journeys through the world of apples are exhaustive, lyric and compelling. If you like NPR, or the old New Yorker, you'll love this book on the fruit of English Yeoman, Thomas Jefferson, French Nobelmen and Johnny Appleseed. You will never look at a grocery store Red Delicious the same again.

Frank Browning perpetuates my belief that journalists are writing the best gardening and plant books. Gardeners are not typically interesting writers and there is such a proliferation of mediocre gardening books on the market. "Apples" is a delightful book. Anyone who wants to grow apples or simply go to the grocery store and buy apples would be enlightened by Frank Browning's book.

Interesting material, but I found myself been flipping forward in many of the early chapters because the content is so poorly edited. A couple of examples: the mythological anecdotes come across as a stream of connect-the-dots and I'm not sure what the takeaway was supposed to be. And when the segue from the power of genetic engineering to the tragedies of biotech is a half chapter on a Japanese researcher who killed himself because a US researcher figured out that there was Fire Blight in Japan, the linkage is just confusing, and the point of the first half of the chapter is mostly lost.
The second half of the book is stronger, when Browning returns to the modern US apple industry that he participates in, and his own efforts to develop a cider business. If you are looking for a patchwork quilt of apple-related essays, some strong, some not, here it is.

I got this book as a first step in a larger exploration on apples. The first few pages, with their purple prose and emphatic self-reference, at first made me fear the worst; but Browning soon settled into an information and anecdote rich style that well satisfied my want for knowledge and pleasant reading. I learned about apples, yes, and I learned a great deal about natural history in general. What is also pleasing about this book is it's concurrent exploration of American and European culture, and their relationship to the apple. If Browning has written a follow-up article to explore how topics explored have evolved, I'd eagerly read it.

Frank Browning's Apples is fascinating. Until I read the book, I never knew the complexity of growing and marketing apples, nor did I fully realize the richness of the apple's botanical heritage. Where I buy apples, my choice is the usual six varieties; the passion of this book reawakened my experience, not long ago, of a bag of winesaps purchased at a farmers market in New York State. If you love apples too, you'll be inspired and frustrated by this book. Beware: it has some botanical sections that are highly technical; these could certainly have benefited by some illustrations or charts. Nevertheless, a culinary book like this one that leaves a lingering taste in your mouth is well worth opening.

Food writer Elliot Essman's other reviews and food articles are available at www.stylegourmet.com

Such a good read! I give this book to friends all the time, even in 2011. Comparable to John McPhee.