Customer Reviews

Fantastic Trees

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a reprint of a 1967 original, but actually it looks even older, both in the kind of illustrations (smallish black & white photographs of a quality that varies from fair to excellent) and in the style it is written. I imagine this will be prevent it from being very popular among today's spoiled readers.

Having said that, there is a wealth of information here measured out in easy-to-digest bits. It is good that this book continues to be in print: it will reward the reader who takes the trouble of digging out what he needs.

I must have read a different book. For those literate enough to read epiphanies of various, exotic tree species around the world, as in how they factor in culture and folklore, the products obtained from their fruit, wood and bark and their general geography, one can't do better than reading Menninger's work. Although I have a B.S. in biology and I firmly believe in evolution as well, I wasn't offended by the biblical references found in his writing. In fact it imbues the book with a wellspring of natural theology which I find touching. A great book to read on a quiet evening.

Perfect in every way. Thank you so much for getting this hard to find book to me. It adds much to my life.

As PvR writes, this book is dated. By more than the 40 some years since publication; it has the flavor of a book from the early 1900's; the protestant missionary - tourist in a hundred exotic gardens whose names are mispelled; unsystematic; creationist. The funny tree the "natives" called tumbo, properly named for the German who "discovered" it and such wonders described in bubbles of enthusiasm for god's menagerie.
And yet a quaint book for your bathroom, for a quick contemplative chuckle at peculiarities of nature and at our silly selves. Very like a whale!