I really like that it is written simply and is easy to understand. It breaks up the things to be done in the garden and yard into seasons so that you can easily tell what you can do during a particular time of the year! It's a great book!

This book is, first of all, a wonderful read. It is full of historical notes, very interesting to this nonbotonist, and is fully researched. Advances have been made since it was written, and perhaps some of the suppliers given in the back are no longer with us; but a good web search will remedy that. It describes the flavors, scents, and appearence of the fruits in succulent detail. Since I have read it, I have been buying and trying to get friends to buy the various fruits listed. It is torture not being able to go out and buy jujubes, gumis, hardy kiwi, pawpaws, and all the rest of the children of Pomona that are here delineated. A wonderful book, full of charming oddities and wit.

I give this 4.5 stars, rather than 5, because I think 5 stars should represent a nearly perfect book, and this book, like virtually every other book on earth, is not perfect. Though this book is outstanding, its FEW flaws arise from the author's OCCASIONAL failure to fully explain precisely what a novice would need to do to execute weedless gardening. I emphasize that such failings are few; and, overall, the book's concision actually aids its clarity. In fact, all things considered, I recommend this book over any other single gardening book I have seen.

I do wish the author had specifically discussed one important issue. He advises the use of paper--and newspaper in particular--to kill weeds, with the paper then becoming part of the soil. I wonder, however (and I simply ask; I don't know the answer), whether all types of paper are safe for such use? Newspaper, for example, contains ink. Is it safe to grow produce in soils containing ink and other paper constituents? I wish the book had expressly addressed that.

In any event, the book is excellent.

In Weedless Gardening, horticultural expert Lee Reich clearly and concisely offers a system of gardening patterned after Mother Nature, and is good for both plants and people. Rather that the traditional approach to annually digging up and working over the soil, Weedless Gardening provides an easy-to-follow, low-impact, effective, and environment friendly approach to planting and maintaining a flower garden, a vegetable garden, trees, and shrubs. Gardeners seeking to protect the soil, eliminate heavy work, and reduce water needs should first begin planning their gardening activities with a thorough reading of Lee Reich's Weedless Gardening!

Not only is The Pruning Book useful for our North Temperate Zone climate, but it is a joy to read. Of course, we all know that before pruning comes planting, which subject the author touches-on in his chapter on fruits and nuts.

I feel it's important to note that Author Lee Reich holds a doctorate in horticulture with an extensive background in pruning research. With regard to pruning trees, he emphasizes the fact that slow does it -- over a period of several years for both young and old. Regarding plants that can be intensively pruned, Lee points out how to exploit to our advantage the tendency of many woody plants to sprout prolifically. Such plants include hedges, topiary, standards, fruit etc.. Yet, he warns us against the heavy pruning of health-compromised woody plants. Dr. Reich, as well, underscores the fact that proper pruning includes an emphasis on minimalist pruning.

Lee hopes that we have properly sited our major woody plants -- planted the right tree in the right place, so to speak. He, nevertheless, also deals with those fun 'though labor intensive pruning forms -- pollarding and pleaching. Lee lists a number of fast-growing deciduous trees that "take" to pollarding as well as listing some trees with strong, flexible branches for pleaching. This is not a serious book of lists, just a productive attempt at teaching us how to form our own lists.

Good advice abounds throughout including apropos diagrams and photos. Plant specific advice is often augmented by easy to read tables in many of the categories of pruning that he discusses. Lee even covers something we forget to include in the subject of pruning -- mowing. And, necessarily, he does justice to the different pruning needs of the various maturational stages of our woodies. This includes training of the young plant as well as maintenance of the mature, and the finer points of renovation of the old and neglected.

Lee's advice includes the "why," not just the "how" that most pruning books concentrate upon. He makes the often dry subject of pruning easy to swallow with a spoon full of all sorts of interesting and helpful information... I bet you didn't know that Japanese wisteria twines clockwise while the Chinese species climbs counterclockwise. I'll leave you with a final observation on the latter. After seeing numerous structures literally torn apart by wisteria, I'm going to plant it as a tree -- per a commonly used method suggested by the author.

I love my pruning tome done by the American Horticultural Society, but, The Pruning Book is also "a keeper."

I am a college student in history, and this is the second book on U-234 I have read. There has also been an excellent History Channel episode on U-234 and the possible use of enriched uranium captured from the German submarine, by the Manhattan Project.

The information in this book is lacking. It seems that there is a lot left out, and little data to support the authors conclusions.

Who ever postulated that the Japanese might have dropped a bomb on LA or San Francisco is not a historian. It would have been virtually impossible for Japan to deliver a nuclear weapon to the West Coast in 1945. In "Japan's Secret Weapon" it is well documented that if Japan had been able to construct a nuclear weapon, its delivery target would have been invading U.S. forces. That is why the ME-262 was on board the U-234. Anyone who believes that Japan would ever have invaded California during WW II neads to re-read Alfred Thayer Mahan. The lines of communication required to sustain an invasion force on the U.S. West Coast by Japanese Forces would have been impossible to maintain. The same wisdom needs to be used in suggesting a nuclear attack after May of 1945. That dog just ain't gonna hunt.

Looks like we have an historian and a novel writter for authors. Tear away the fiction, beef up more historical data, and you would have a great book.

Also . . . DNA extracts from a skull fragment in Moscow identify it as Hitler . . . . this is old news. Leave the escape of Hitler to South America to the novel writers.