The Tulip

Rating:
Summary: FASCINATING
Review: A wonderful book. I got it from the library and read it very quickly - now I am buying it. There is a very good balance between the various sections - mercifully the Dutch tulip mania is not more than 50 pages or so - all info on that bubble is available in Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crrowds (Mackay). One is given sufficient information on the various historical aspects without going into too many details. The focus of the book is, after all, the tulip. The illustrations are perfect - excellent colour reproduction (amazing that it can be done for such a low price) and the list of cultivars at the end of the book is fascinating - particularly to a non-gardener such as myself.

Rating:
Summary: Inspiring!
Review: As a poet, I find this book leading me to a fuller understanding of the tulip and the cultures influenced by it, inspiring me from pen to paper, crying out the desires embedded in the spirit of this amazing flower.

Sienna Wildfield Poetry Lounge
http://travel.to/themoon

Rating:
Summary: the topic seemed so interesting...
Review: I could not finish this book, and I thought it would be right up my alley. It was a sort of a mix of anecdotes and history. Personally I could have done without the anecdotes.

Rating:
Summary: In Love with a Flower
Review: I was seduced by the tulip when as an eight-year old I saw my first in Srinagar. Do any remain there today? My love deepened when botany taught me how unique the tulip really was. Its gorgeous variegated colours are produced by a tiny parasite, an aphid, that weakens the plant but renders the bloom glorious. Anne Pavord narrates the history of the tulip like a love story. And it is one, from its origin as a wild flower of the Asian steppes to its adoption by the Ottomans of Istanbul, to its 17th century arrival in the west and the subsequent tulipmania that gripped Europe, to the auction in Holland in February 1637 when 99 lots of tulip bulbs fetched 90,000 guilders ( more than US $12 million of today ). This extraordinary, lavishly illustrated book compells me to restate my desire -- to be laid to rest in Keukenhoff outside Amsterdam.

Rating:
Summary: Unless you're a Master Gardener bypass this book.
Review: If you're looking for some insight into the 1600's tulip craze before making a trip to the Netherlands, this is NOT the book to buy. Try "Tulipomania" by Mike Dash instead. His version is way more entertaining and easy to understand. I know Anna Pavord's book is well-regarded, but for amateur gardeners and people who are mainly interested in discovering WHY the bulb frenzy occurred, her phone-book size tome is way over the top w/information. I found it plodding and skimmed many pages only to find that she hadn't answered the key question of how the craze developed. Skip this mega-volume and try the other unless you're a serious horticulturalist.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting,but heavy.
Review: Ms.Pavord certainly does love her tulips - the narrative is strewn with latin names for every variety of tulip.
Originally from the middle-east and very different to most other flowers, the discovery of strange multi-coloured hybrids that appeared spontaneously kept nurserymen occupied for years looking for the perfect specimen. This led to an outrageous inflation in the price, people selling their homes to buy one bulb!

Written in a style that fails to hold one's attention, there is perhaps a tad more botanical detail than is necessary for the layman, but when one considers that this is the second book - a corollary to a scholarly exercise - on tulips, it is surprising that so little jargon is used.
Very informative though lacking in story-telling. ***.

Rating:
Summary: Oh, dear. A decorator's book...
Review: read the reviews and thought I would love this book but, ohmygod, yawn, this is the sort of book that decorators (and only decorators) enthuse about. Text is really badly written, nice pictures - yes, nice pictures - but that's about it. Can't help feeling that Ms Pavord needed a good editor to take her in hand and help sort out the mind-numbingly dull prose style. But, yes, there were also bits I liked (Turkish stuff was ok and the virus/breaking stuff was ok) but... etc

Rating:
Summary: Don't believe the reviews!
Review: Sadly, there is a real trend in this country for reviewers to fall for a PR's hype and laud a book that just isn't anywhere near as good as the author and the publisher would like us to believe. The Tulip is a prime example of this phenomenon. I must have read four or five reviews of the book before I bought it, and they were all gushing in their praise for The Tulip and for Anna Pavord. Sadly, neither is remotely worth it. This volume is over-written, over-priced and over-long. Do yourself a favour. Don't fall for the hype and don't waste your money on the Tulip.

Rating:
Summary: Too narrow and too much!
Review: Sorry, but I have to agree with some of the negative comments this book has already attracted. Anna Pavord has no sense of proportion. A book which placed the tulip in the context of its times would be fabulous. This is just too narrow and too much.

Rating:
Summary: A beautiful but poorly organized book.
Review: The illustrations are wonderful and the book is extremely handsome. However, the plates are sometimes of marginal relevance to the accompanying text. There is an amazing amount of information but it is hard to find, for example, a coherent discussion of all the tulip species. A personal gripe, virus infected tulips are undoubtedly beautiful but, unlike Ms. Pavord, I do not consider them to be more interesting than all other tulips.