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Rating: 
Summary: Strategy and Formulas, Dan Bensking
Review: Is excellente book very usefull for practitionars and for any herbalist one to know about CHM.
Rating: 
Summary: Still the Standard
Review: Regardless of its very few flaws, this is still the standard reference for basic chinese herbal formulas. Many books have formulas with herbs and dosages, but none speak so extensively of how each herb within the formula works. This is an indispensable tome for the OM student. As for whether the general public will appreciate it, I doubt it. This is the kind of book needed by those who aspire to writing personalized modifications of classical formulas... but no one else except the extremely curious patient will find it worth the price.
Rating:
Summary: Still the Standard
Review: Regardless of its very few flaws, this is still the standard reference for basic chinese herbal formulas. Many books have formulas with herbs and dosages, but none speak so extensively of how each herb within the formula works. This is an indispensable tome for the OM student. As for whether the general public will appreciate it, I doubt it. This is the kind of book needed by those who aspire to writing personalized modifications of classical formulas... but no one else except the extremely curious patient will find it worth the price.
Rating:
Summary: No contenders
Review: The fact that no real contenders have emerged in more than 13 years since this book's publication is sufficient testimony to its quality.Formulas and Strategies is used in virtually every formal program in Chinese herbal medicine in the English-speaking world. It is by no means exhaustive, but it is more than sufficient as basic classroom text, and the quality of the content, while inconsistent, is on balance very high indeed. The book has not been updated in a while, so some information about herb-drug interactions is not reflected here, but there is not enough new information of that sort that its absence detracts in any major way from the book's value as a textbook. Any good teacher will be able to fill in those few blanks, and numerous journal articles have been written about the errors and omissions in Formulas and Strategies. To summarize, there are few errors and omissions for a work of its size, and the ones that are present are minor. Some disagree with Bensky over translational matters, but it should be pointed out that he did provide a glossary of terms as an appendix. It is possible, with some effort, to get back to most of the Chinese terms he has translated. A strength and a weakness of Formulas and Strategies is that Bensky chose, whenever possible, to go back to the original source where each formula first appears in history. This is actually very interesting in some ways and difficult in others, because many formulas have been used in different ways over the course of their history. It would have been nice to see more of that type of information, but the book is already quite large, and it is clear that some editorial decision had to be made. A much larger work would have been too expensive too produce and would not have sold well. Formulas and Strategies has so far stood the test of time admirably. While it would be nice to see more competition in this area, Formulas and Strategies is just the sort of book you like to see in a market that is dominated by just one book. It is much better than it has to be to be the only one out there.
Rating:
Summary: Bensky's Formuales & Strategies
Review: This is a classical book about Herbal Formulaes. I have read it several times and consult it often. I believe Stategy refers to how an herbologist will be able to use the book to add or modify ingridient and dosage. Unlike the review I wrote for "Material Medica", I find this is a useful book with much needed information to come up with a prescription. Needless to say the translation of this book is choppy in many places. The authors can keep the terms more to the point. These flowerly terms used is a minus.
The original source of these prescriptions are of interest to the medical historians only as modern pharmacologist are more concerned with the chemical interactions and its function. The lack of modern Chinese and western sources also shows this is just a compilation of old sources. In that respect there are many formula prescription books out in Chinese which can be translated nicely into English. The book does have IDs showing important formulas required for certain state or national examinations. However, these required formulas are not always detailed enough or exist to explain in details what they really are. Similar to Material Medica it also has PinYin flaws in many places showing its obvious lack of proof reading capability using modern Chinese word processors. All in all, this is still an authorative English language source on the subject of Formulaes.
Reviewed by Sam Shueh, medical librarian
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