Rating: 
Summary: A simply beautiful coffee table book and alas, quite dull !
Review: The packaging of this volume is simply beautiful as are the lavish illustrations. However,the book which promises a facinating tale is in truth quite dull. Anna Pavord is simply too carried away with the botanty of her subject and gives just a glimpse into the human maelstrom that surrounded the tulip. More story telling and 'human interest' anecdotes would have been appreciated.
Rating: 
Summary: This book is a lemon. Right up there with "Sophie's Choice."
Review: The publisher and editor should be ashamed of themselves. Even a tulip lover would find this book a waste of time actually reading. It might be useful as a reference but that is not what it was advertised as. The sad part is that any idiot could have made a decent book out of this idea and possibly out of some of the research. As it is, it reads like a bunch of undigested reference notes that were not followed up. A list in fact of unconnected, uninteresting information.
Rating:
Summary: The real mystery is...
Review: The strangest thing about this book is the bit on the jacket where it says Anna Pavord makes her living as a journalist. The real mystery here isn't the puzzle of what caused the Dutch tulip mania (a genuinely enticing subject that Pavord somehow manages to render yawn-inducing), but who on earth would employ a woman with the world's most tedious prose style as a writer. Stick to the gardening, Ms Pavord, and leave writing books to people who are properly qualifed to do it!!
Rating: 
Summary: A beautiful book, but over-rated and dull.
Review: This book is lovely and I'm glad I own it. However, I'm quite disappointed because it does not live up to the rave reviews from the press. Ms. Pavlord doesn't do much more than chronicle the hundreds of people who have owned, grown, or collected, admired tulips over the last few thousand years. The whole book reads as a very boring list. There is no sense of larger themes linked to human history, commerce or science. I had hoped to become quite involved and inspired by this book -- because I love tulips -- but that has not been the case. Alas, I've made it to page 100 but now I am giving up and it will take a spot on my coffee table.
Rating: 
Summary: The Tulip
Review: This book, generally touted as 'the definitive book' on tulips, is somewhat disappointing. More interesting historical information exists on tulipomania and tulip fever. Particularly irksome is the prevalence of passages in French with no English translations. Come on, Ms Pavord, we aren't all academics schooled in French! I thought information on the discovery of the virus that causes tulips to 'break' should have been included: so much has been written already about tulip fever through the 16th and 17th centuries that to continue the history to the 1920s, when the cause of breaking tulips was discovered, would have rounded out the picture nicely. But we only receive a vague reference here and there. Considering also that the latter part of the book concerns species and hybrid tulips, more photographs would have been helpful. One description sounds much like another after a while.
Rating: 
Summary: A relatively scientific tome...
Review: This is a beautiful book and more of a history book than a garden book. I found it in the history section of a local bookstore. "The Tulip" is filled with color reproductions of paintings and prints executed in the Netherlands in the 16th-18th centuries, so one could argue it is an art book. Although the author tells the story of the introduction of the tulip into the west, the real contribution of the book as far as I am concerned is the author's discourse on the origins of the various kinds of tulips. Reading, "The Tulip" has relieved me of the feelings of intimidation I have experienced as I browsed through the various professional bulb catalogs from growers. These catalogs have quite reasonable prices, and many more bulb offerings than can be found in local garden center stores, however, they never contain photos and provide only sparse information about the growing requirements and behaviour of specific bulbs. Knowing more about the geographic origins, history, and growing preferences of various tulip types has made me bolder, and I am experimenting with many new bulbs this year. If you're new to gardening, you may not find this book very useful. Try the Eyewitness Garden Handbook "Bulbs" to get started growing bulbs, including tulips.
Rating:
Summary: The Tulip
Review: Tulips, I admit, are my favorite flower. I only wished they bloomed for a longer period of time! But now that I have The Tulip I think I will be able to get through the summer, fall, and winter more easily. I really enjoyed this book in every way. The plates and illustrations are beautifully reproduced, and I did not find that they were insufficiently linked to the text. In fact, I found that after reading the text I could look at the illustrations for a long time, seeing more and more detail that I know would have passed me by without the text. The emphasis in this book is on the history of the tulip, something that I find really fascinating. From its beginnings in the Ottoman empire through its introduction to western gardens, the bacteria that led to the famous "breaks" in tulip coloration and then tulip mania, this book is a delightful, entertaining and very informative read.
Rating:
Summary: For all who love tulips
Review: Tulips, I admit, are my favorite flower. I only wished they bloomed for a longer period of time! But now that I have The Tulip I think I will be able to get through the summer, fall, and winter more easily. I really enjoyed this book in every way. The plates and illustrations are beautifully reproduced, and I did not find that they were insufficiently linked to the text. In fact, I found that after reading the text I could look at the illustrations for a long time, seeing more and more detail that I know would have passed me by without the text. The emphasis in this book is on the history of the tulip, something that I find really fascinating. From its beginnings in the Ottoman empire through its introduction to western gardens, the bacteria that led to the famous "breaks" in tulip coloration and then tulip mania, this book is a delightful, entertaining and very informative read.
Rating:
Summary: Badly over-hyped - only for true obsessives
Review: What a big disappointment this book was!! I love gardens, love gardening, and majored in history, so I thought a history of the tulip would be a great buy, but boy does Anna Pavord overdo what could have been a good thing. This book is at least 50% too expensive and 50% too long, and it would have been so much better if the author had forgotten about trying to be comprehensive (the second half of the book is nothing but a huge catalog of species of interest only to professional horticulturists) and put more effort into making some of the fasxinating people she mentions in the first half come alive. Instead, the book turns into an over-rapid tour through hundreds of years of history, with little or no attempt made to provide background details that would help us put an undoubtedly fascinating story in context. The interesting parts of the tulip's history - particularly the Dutch tulip mania of the 1630s - are given little more weight than lengthy trawls through far less fascinating periods. Sure, the book looks great but, really, what a shame.
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