This book is a fabulous help for identifying, choosing and learning about trees. The illustrations are simple and to the point, and there is a lot of background information on each tree. Appearance is described with illustrations for different seasons.

This book is a well-organized listing of edible wild plants in North America. Listings are by season, so you know when to look for a specific plant. Habitat is described including a quick reference range map of North America, as are how to harvest, prepare, and store foods for future use. A symbol key at the left of each plant will tell you at a glance what uses you can put a plant to; trail nibble, potherb, etc. Related edible and poisonous look alikes are also listed. This book utilizes pictures, something none of the other books I looked at did. I think this makes identification of plants much easier than relying on someone's black and white sketch or colored pencil rendering of something wild that I'm plan to eat. The one down side to this is that some of the pictures could be much better; about a dozen pictures are black and white, while others show the plant only at a distance which might make identification problematical. However, scientific names are provided, and if you have the luxury of time, you can do a search online for a more precise picture.

I bought this book to use to gather wild plants for making homemade wines, but now it's a companion whenever I go hiking, fishing, camping, or merely sightseeing. It's that valuable!

The book is divided into an introductory section, guides to harvesting plants in each of the four seasons, the plants themselves (also presented seasonally), poisonous plants, a nutritional guide, and two great indices. The introduction includes great tips on how to prepare wild foods as drinks, snacks, entres, and condiments, along with recipes for 25 jellies, 20 jams and 17 fruit and berry pies. But the good part is yet to come.

Each plant is presented with a good-to-excellent photograph, a distribution map (so a person in the Pacific Northwest doesn't have to wonder whether he or she is looking at a squashberry or a hobblebush berry), a complete description, identification of the edible parts, harvest and preparation notes, related species, and poisonous look-alikes (if any). The presentations are just excellent. My only complaint is that the book isn't twice as thick.

Whether you just want to be prepared for emergencies or you want to collect wild edibles for making jams, jellies, pies, and wine, this book is one of the only two you'll probably need. The other is a good regional guide, because with over 20,000 species of plants to choose from north of the Rio Grande alone, a guide to regional edibles is a must.

This books shows, in an easy to understand format-in my opinion-a person how to identify wild edible plants that they can harvest (some even in their own backyard). It shows photos of the plants, tells you if there is a poisonous look alike plant, how to identify them, common locations of the plants, and how to prepare them for a meal. If someone wants to learn more about eating plants that grow in the wild, this book is the one I think should be in their library.

This book is written by Thomas Elias shows him as an advocate for Dr. Burzynski. This is not some book report. It is a relatively complete story of how Dr. Burzynski was man-handled by the FDA. The Burzynski Breakthrough talks of a system that subordinates the potential virtues of a new and exciting cancer treatment for the rigid and sometimes caustic bureaucratic requirements of the FDA.

He also takes the time to detail several individuals that were positively impacted by Burzynski's treatments. There are also instances that recount treatments that were not successful.

If you are interested about discovering what his anti-neoplastin treatment is or what the FDA did to him at our expense, this book is for you.

If you need hope, this book may give you hope. I would not deny my child hope because some bibliography was not filled out correctly or some documentation of some report was not done to some random individual's liking. The fact is that his treatments have made a difference in many people's lives and the ones that they love.

Elias tells an incredible story of government skullduggery in cahoots with a pharmaceutical company in this non-fiction investigative book that often reads like fiction. Through original government documents and patient interviews, the author establishes beyond reasonable doubt that there has in fact been a [plan] first to suppress and later to [borrow] Burzynski's non-toxic treatment. He also presents strong evidence that the treatment is effective against the vast majority of cancers. There is no mystery as to why this treatment has not yet been approved; plenty of hard evidence of malfeasance at the highest levels of American science is presented here. It's about time the FDA changed its tune and approved this [chemical substance]. When that happens, it should spark the greatest medical scandal of our time. For the [chemical substance]. will not have changed; only the regulators. Which means many thousands of patients for whom antineoplastons should have been the first treatment of preference have in effect been murdered by the cancer establishment.

This book is as much about the tyranny of the United States Government against freedom of choice for medical treatment of its citizens, as it is about a new cancer treatment.
Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, M.D., Ph. D., a very brilliant and courageous medical doctor from Poland, and the subject of this book, has been vilified by the medical orthodoxy of the United States, including the United States Food and Drug Administration. While his new cancer treatment is not perfect, neither is the orthodox cancer treatment. While his cancer treatment does not work on all types of cancers, neither does theirs. While some of his patients die, so do many of those given the orthodox, and largely untested treatments of dangerous, toxic drugs, dangerous surgery and cancer causing radiation. While his treatment is expensive, so is theirs, except that insurance usually only pays for their treatment even if it fails and the patient is harmed or ultimately dies.
However, the author Thomas D. Elias makes every effort to present a balanced report and provides charts in the back of the book indicating the number of successes and failures of this cancer treatment.
In Chapter 7, he goes into much detail discussing the many false and misleading statements by one Saul Green, Ph. D., virtually demolishing each of them, although the quackwatch website, operated by one Stephen Barrett, M.D., still presents these false and misleading statements there, and others by Dr. Green seeking to use innuendo to vilify others as well.
In Chapter 8 Elias details the sordid, tyrannical, behavior of the FDA in the cases of Thomas Navarro and David Smith. He states: "Smith's ordeal, and Thomas Navarro's, represent clearcut cases of legalistic sophistry triumphing over the individual will of the patients whose lives were threatened..." "Strikingly, during each hearing Kessler, Robert Spiller, DeLap and other FDA officials who had spent years pursuing Burzynski left the room before patients could begin their often heart-wrenching testimony..." This statement followed testimony by Mary Michaels of Troy, Michigan during congressional hearings where she stated: "Without his treatment my son will die!"
The themes of this book are entirely consistent with other reports by distinguished investigators like Ralph W. Moss, Ph. D., who devoted about 50 pages to this subject in Chapter 14 of his book "The Cancer Industry Unravelling the Politics", Paragon House, New York, 1989. In fact, Dr. Moss himself has been vilified by the FDA when they sought to illegally subpoena information he had about Dr. Burzynski. This is documented in the book "The Politics of Cancer Revisited", by Samuel S. Epstein, M.D., East Ridge Press, 1998, page 556.
A distinguished United States Senator by the name of Barry Goldwater once said words to the effect: "A government big enough to give, is also big enough to take away." This excellent book by Thomas Elias documents how our own very elected and appointed government "leaders" fight, often hidden behind closed doors,against their own citizens who elected them, to take away our most fundamental freedoms; namely, the freedom to choose our own medical treatment!

Winfield J. Abbe, Ph. D., Physics