The Illustrated World Encyclopedia of Apples: A Comprehensive Identification Guide to Over 400 Varieties Accompanied by 60 Scrumptious Recipes

A nice looking book with excellent photography. Subjects covered include apples in history and myth, cultivation & training, propagation, harvesting & storage and pests & diseases. These are all a basic overview and more detail can be found in other books. Then there is the apple directory in alphabetical order with clear photos of all apples featured - top view, bottom view, cut in half and with some, on the tree as well. However, maybe I'm writing from too British a perspective but there are quite a few varieties left out which I would like to have seen included such as Discovery, Laxton's Epicure, Lord Derby, Bloody ploughman to name but a few. It would also have been nice to see some cider varieties. As befits an international book there are many varieties from France, USA etc. which I will never ever see. Some of the subject apples left me wondering "surely they could have found a better specimen than that to photograph!" The final section of the book is comprised of recipes featuring apples but in my opinion it would have been better to leave this out and instead squeeze more apple varieties in - there are plenty of cookbooks out there but not that many truly comprehensive apple identification guides. Not a bad book and at the price its worth adding to your collection.

Although the book is quite good and the delivery was on time I was looking for more in depth on pruning apple trees

I wish I had bought this wonderful book before. It gives you a great introduction to the world of apples. Great photography and I love the combination of encyclopedia and cook book. Lots of great recepies.

A good picture reference but it would help if it had more information about fruit ripening times and pollination groups.

Even basic information about the varieties would have been useful, like some indication of flowering time or disease resistance. Sometimes this is included in footnotes or comments, but it is not provided consistently. The main value of the book is the pictures of so many different varieties.

A very concise listing of all types of apples grown in the UK. With excellent descriptions and notes. For the price a must for your library shelf. As I grow fruit rootstocks (gb-online.co.uk) and I collect old varieties of fruit, this is an asset.

The Illustrated World Encyclopedia of Apples is a book that was well worth waiting for. It is full of lovely illustrations and descriptions of the different types of apples. It also contains some apple recipes as well as a section on growing and caring for apple trees. I ordered it from Amazon and am very pleased with it.

There are some excellent things about this book. The directory is the reason I bought the book and the reason I will find it useful.To sum up, I think the book tries to do too much and does not excel in any of the things it tries to do. I could have done without the long section of recipes. There are lots of books with apple recipes and many of them better than this. There are entries on cultivation, propagation etc which are ok but could all have been better. You could probably say that about many books but in this case I felt very strongly that the book was trying to cover too much ground. Without the cookery section it would have been possible to provide a much more satisfactory overview of cultivation. As an example I would cite the section on rootstocks. There is only one paragraph and yet choice of rootstocks is absolutely vital to anyone planting an apple tree. Only 3 rootstocks are mentioned in any detail and nothing is said about the suitability of different rootstocks for different soils and climates. The full title of the book is The Illustrated World Encyclopedia of Apples: a Comprehensive Identification Guide to Over 400 Varieties Accompanied by 95 Scrumptious Recipes.As I said at the start of this review , it is the directory I will find most useful. it does give details of many different apples with different views of the apple. Some of the pictures could be better as a previous reviewer said. Since the directory is said to be comprehensive I would have expected full details of all the most common apples. The book does not have full details. It lists the flowering time of all apples but it does not give the season to pick them or when they are best for eating. I would have expected both these details to be included. I would especially expect picking time to be given as the book claims to be useful for identification purposes and the time an apple is ready does help considerably to narrow down the field when you are trying to identify an unknown apple. The choice of apples included is also odd. I can understand that the more uncommon apples would not be listed but I would have expected all the most common apples to be included. Out of interest and in order to assess the quality of the pictures I looked up some of our apples. The book does not include Discovery, Scrumptious, Fiesta, Red Devil or Katy. If you go to garden centre or look at one of the catalogues of the main mail order seed firms the chances are that they will list 3. 4 or possibly all these five varieties.I would look forward to and would certainly buy a revised edition of this book if the directory section was filled out with more information and more varieties. Without the cookery section and with a revamp of the earlier sections (taking out some of the general stuff eg a picture of a compost heap, and strengthening the rest) the book could easily include 600 varieties instead of 400. There is a real need for such a book and the general principle and layout of the directory is basically excellent. A revised edition on these lines would also almost certainly earn itself 5 stars from me.