I would never have believed that you could write a whole book about mint. But then, I never knew the mint family (Lamiaceae or Labiatae) was such a huge one. It includes 67 genera, of which the commonest are lavender, oregano, nettle, thyme, bugle and rosemary.

Barbara Perry Lawton is a well-known garden writer in the US whose concise, factual style helps her pack a ton of information into each page. Much of her extensive research was done at the Missouri Botanical Garden, which reminded me what a huge asset a good botanical garden is in any community. I also learned that the Missouri Botanical Garden has a world-class collection of early (pre-Linnaean) botanical books. Some of the illustrations in this book are reproduced from drawings made over 400 years ago and they are what helps to make this book unique.

The writer has organized her material well, starting with the history of the mint family and moving on to discuss herbal mints, ornamental mints, weedy mints. After short sections on pests and the botany of mints the writer moves to "Catalogue of Mints" which takes up about half of the book. This contains useful descriptions of most of the genera and many of the species within them, nicely illustrated with line drawings.

There is a brief glossary, three pages of suggestions for durther reading and an index of plant names.

This is a professionally written and well-researched book, and deserves a place on the book shelf of anyone interested in herbs or botany.