I purchased this beauty along with Botanica's Roses, from Amazon. WOW was I delighted! Between the 2 I have almost every rose info I could imagine. It is well worth the money and a must have for every rosarian. I have 40 roses so far and found the info very useful in my continued purchases. (ex: I live in the NW and have wet weather...many roses dislike wet and don't open properly. The books reveal which are poor choices for my such climate. Now that is USEFUL information!)

Of course it goes without saying that the author knows his roses and the pictures are, well, drop-dead gorgeous (as are in the Botanica's Roses book.)

A 100% must have, along with Botanica's.

This is not a coffee table book. Though the pages are high-quality paper, the photos excellent and plentiful, and the binding high-quality, the book is essentially a meaty reference. If there were a college course on roses, this might serve as a texbook.

Beales starts as most authors do by talking about rose history, culture and using roses in the garden. It is clear that Beales is not so interested in roses as show-bench trophy fodder but as vital elements of a user-friendly and colorful garden. This sentiment shows in his selection of cultivars.

The bulk of the book is descriptions of roses. Beales has developed the most complete shorthand available for expressing all the things you wish to about a rose: how well it does in the shade, which diseases it gets, when it blooms, how big and bushy the plant is. This means that his text entries can focus on the facets of the rose that make it unique in the garden. In other words, he manages to convey the same amount of information as would a book twice the heft of this very hefty tome.

The book does a commendable job covering all old rose classes, climbing roses, shrub roses, species, and near-species cultivars. It is the over-fat classes of Hybrid Perpetuals and Hybrid Teas, that have pricipally recieved the editorial hatchet. And since Beales considers only 2000 or so cultivars, this book is good for culling out the considerable amount of dross among roses - especially among hybrid teas.

If you know you will never use roses for any purpose than cutting or showing on a bench, this book will be of only peripheral use. But if you yearn to understand how roses can work in a garden setting, this is one of the best buys around.

Publishers, please bring "Classic Roses" by Peter Beales back into print! I bought a copy for a friend and now I can't bear to give it up. It has everything for the rosarian: thousands of enticing color photographs and descriptions (the author's own collection of roses numbers well over 2,000 species and varieties); extensive chapters on using roses in the landscape (even if your 'landscape' happens to be an apartment terrace), the care and cultivation of roses, the history of roses; and at the back of the encyclopediac text, there are extensive appendixes, indices, a glossary of terms, and suggestions for further reading.

Peter Beales is also a pleasure to read--very British; very knowledgeable; and it is very obvious that he loves his subject. I have only two minor suggestions for "Classic Roses" if it is once again revised: include U.S.A. climate zones for the roses; include photographs of all (not most) of the roses (I'll bet the author wanted to do this and the publishers wouldn't let him).

As fond as I am of my friend, "Classic Roses" and I are never going to part company.

Peter brings to one source as much information about the history as possible. He obviously did much research in not only tracking down the possible existence of TJBeale, but also in the plausability of such a treasure even existing. I highly recommend the book to any newcomer to the treasure story as it will save countless hours (if not months) of research.

Good job Peter!

This is a visually stunning tour of rose gardens throughout Europe and the United States. Beales interviewed the owners and describes their gardens in glorious detail. The photographs by Russell are equally beautiful. This is a beautiful book that gardeners and rose lovers will love to have in their library.

... buy this book. It was extremely helpful to us as we planned and planted a large rose garden from scratch this spring. The pictures are superior to those you will find in most catalogs. The descriptions, while maddeningly inconsistent in the information they provide, give an independent check to the glowing descriptions that catalogs use to promote rose purchases. Some roses are less desirable -- less robust, less fragrant, less orderly in their growth -- than others. This book will help you more than any other book we have found to make an initial pass through the catalogs and concentrate on roses likely to fit your needs. There is no substitute for the experience and advice of local growers and nurseries who have grown roses in your area, but this book will prepare you to inquire and process information from those sources efficiently. If we could own only one rose book, this would be the book.

I have grown roses for many years but each year I manage to find room for more so I need a book that will give me a description and photo of the rose I am looking to buy. I use lists of roses to grow in my area from the local rose society. These lists only contain names so I needed to look up their descriptions in my books but I could never find a book that had every rose I needed to look up, invariably I would have to search through several books and even then miss a few. It was so aggrivating, most rose books are small, they cover only a couple hundred which increased the chances that you wouldn't find the rose you wanted in a particular book. FINALLY I have one source to use, everything I need in one book. The photos are numerous and beautiful. The descriptions give you the type of information you need. This book is superb, you will only end up spending the price of this book on numerous smaller books and still be unsatisfied so you might as well get it now. I cant say enough good things about this book, I waited a long time for it.

Although BOTANICA'S ROSES is described as an encyclopedia, the floral entries are more like annotated dictionary entries than encyclopedia articles. Each entry is succinct, ususally a paragraph or two, and contains pertinant information for the rose grower such as recommended growing zone, but I would have liked more information. ROSES is probably relatively exhaustive, that is it lists most of the extant roses. I was able to find information about two roses I purchased at the garden center last year that I could find no where else.

I own several other rose books, and find that no one book has all the information I require. For example, I have just purchased a 'Blanc Double De Corbert' rose. BOTANICA'S tells me the rose is a modern, hybrid rugosa, white, repeat flowering. A paragraph of about 100 words in tiny type tells me something about the doubtful heritage of the plant and that it might produce orange-red hips. The entry also lists the growing zones, the parentage prefaced with "possibly" and awards the rose has received.

THE ULTIMATE ROSE BOOK by Stirling Macoboy tells me the double white from the village of Corbert in France is a cross between Rosa rugosa and the Tea Rose 'Sombreuil' according to Cochet-Cochet who raised the rose in 1891. the ULTIMATE entry also tells me the flowers rot in wet conditions and there are no hips.

SMITH AND HAWKINS 100 OLD ROSES FOR THE AMERICAN GARDEN says 'Blanc Double de Corbert' will grow and thrive under extreme conditions and produce stongly scented blooms with a bumper crop of tomato-rose hips. "All in all this is one tough customer."

In THE ORGANIC ROSE GARDEN, Liz Druitt says 'Blanc Double de Corbert' is a hybrid rugosa introduced in 1892 and wonderful for growing in the upper south. It can withstand heat, probably because it has a little Tea blood from it's 'Sombreuil' ancestor. Blanc even works well in partial shade. In fact, she says, it likes a little afternoon shade. And, Blanc produces successive crops of orange-red hips as it blooms all summer.

What is the gardener to believe? Well, Macoboy is English and undoubtedly, Blanc, which comes from a warmer dryier area of France does better in a warmer drier climate--not England. These various entries show you cannot hope to grow roses unless you were born with a green thumb and/or can consult more than one reference. BOTANICA'S ROSES is a pretty good reference book for American gardeners attempting to grow roses.

Classic Roses by Peter Beales is a good illustrated book of many roses that you can find and of some that you can't find. It is very helpful with good pictures of most of the roses and has useful tips on growth habits and problems that the rose may have like thin stems or weak stems. The index is handy for finding the rose by its common name. The listing of landscape roses is good and I find the history and evolution of the rose very informative. Those who would like to cultivate their own rose will find this book useful. I Like this book very much and everytime I look it it I find something new.

This book explores a little researched area of the Second World War: armored fighting vehicle design. The thesis in and of itself is nothing new to students of the conflict: namely that British tanks were inferior to their German opponents in armor (Quality and thickness), firepower (main tank weapon, and fire control) and reliability. What is new is the perspective from a crewman and his contemporaries. The narrative is a sad story of official indifference and political infighting that cost unnecessary lives during the fighting in the ETO. Unfortunately, these insights are somewhat clouded by a confusing and contradictory work. For example, the 75mm medium-velocity gun on the Sherman series is rightly derided for its lack of penetrating power; however, later it is lauded for its overall usefulness (due to the effective HE round it fired) without reservations. The reader is left to wonder, "did crews think the weapon was effective or didn't they"? The text is unclear on this point and often repeats its assertions although they are reworded. This doesn't normally bother me in larger books, but in a work of only 200+ pages it shows some inattentive editing. The author's opinions of the British leadership in the armored branch at this time, that very few understood armored warfare, are impassioned and validated by other research and make interesting reading. If you are a serious student of WW2 armored warfare you will find some value here. A general interest reader may wish to wait for another edition.