Customer Reviews

Common to This Country: Botanical Discoveries of Lewis and Clark

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This book was mentioned in a local newspaper; I received it for my birthday and really enjoyed reading it!! It is a delightful mix of history and botany with soft illustrations. It has quotes from the journals of Lewis and Clark and reveals their reactions to plants they collected. The design, pages with a muted yellow edge and the font, helped tell the story of plant collection during the Lewis and Clark expedition. Interesting details were shared about the expedition and the plants that were collected. The illustrations also were muted or soft - not the hard line drawings you sometimes see of plants. Designed and written well.

As both a botanist who is familiar with many of the species in the book, and as a lover of history and the story of Lewis and Clark, I found the book very enjoyable. I'm in agreement with the other review (as of 10 March 2006) that the illustrations are very pleasing, and the book and paper quality is excellent. New and well done botanical illustrations have become a rarity in the days of digital photography, and these drawings, by Charlotte Staub Thomas, are excellent, the one exception being the drawing for bur oak which is sub-par. Certainly, serious botanists would wish for more information about each plant, and for more plants to be included. But as a book for plant lovers and gardeners, this book is a real value.