Colin Spencer does an excellent job of covering the last couple million years of vegetarianism. This book is not an easy read, especially in the sections about the diet of early man, and the analysis of some of the early Christian sects. You'll learn why mainstream society traditionally looks at vegetarians as "cranks" Puritanical, or just plain heretical. This is slowly beginning to change, but I think that in some areas of the world, (esp. where I live) vegetarians are still those weird outsiders who are thumbing their nose at the hallowed institution of eating meat. You'll also learn that early vegetarians weren't vegetarians for animal welfare reasons. For the Greeks like Plutarch or Pythagoras it was all about reincarnation (metempsychosis or transmigration of souls) For the early Christian sects eating meat was a symbol of man's Fall from grace. Some early Christian hermits also abstained from meat & alcohol because they thought consuming these didn't jive with the ascetic lifestyle; you had to deprive yourself of luxuries to become spiritually closer with your God.

My only quibble is that Spencer could've covered the last 100 years in more depth. The last 50 pages is surprisingly lacking in the same kind of detail that Spencer devoted to, (for instance) the Early Christian era. Maybe the last 100 years has been covered better in other books? I don't know, since this is the first book of its type that I've read.

OK, actually I have one other quibble.....In the last 20 pages, Spencer goes off on a rant about corporate farming, the effects of livestock farming on the environment, the dangers of eating meat (salmonella, heart disease, cancer). I thought this was a "history" of vegetarianism??? I mean, I agree with all the things he says about the above topics. I'm an ardent vegetarian myself, but I wish he had devoted more space to the last 100 years of vegetarianism, instead of the polemic.

Another thing to consider is tha Spencer goes go more in detail about vegetarianism in Europe and the UK. If you want a lengthier discussion on vegetarianism in the U.S try somewhere else. This is still an excellent book for a history of vegetarianism. I hope that other authors will take up this topic.

"A reader" says that humans should have priority. I agree with that. That is why I'm vegetarian. By doing so, I make more food available to others, and decrease my chances of degenerate disease in the process.

I thought the book sometime spent too much time on some subjects, and too little on others. But still, overall, a good book.

Lots of people have tried to make an issue about Hitler's claimed vegetarianism. Of course whether he was or wasn't has no bearing on his actions. But since so many people make an issue of it, Spencer had to cover Hitler. What Spencer says about Hitler isn't the same as what I had heard from other sources. Most other sources I thought said Hitler enjoyed meat, but gave up most meat due to digestion problems. Spencer says that Hitler was vegetarian just to be different then everybody else. Which is true, I don't know, but I would assume that Spencer knows what he is talking about.

Som people want to excuse their meat eating on the base of Bible, but theirs attempts are futile,just because quoted often Letters of Paul are simply false ones,introduced to the Bible by clergymen who had been in opposition to true teaching of Jesus. Specially letters to Timothy I,and Timothy II are recognized by modern biblists as forgeries. I didn't know that not harm any creature is...."demonic teaching" It is rather false teaching of the "false apostles" -can be clled

DEMONIC TEACHING.

I found The Vegetable Book to be a great intellectual resource of botanical as well as historical information regarding vegetables. Though the quantity of actual recepies for each category was kept at minimal, Colin Spencer's vegetable knowledge is indeed educational and recommended for cooks and writers alike. Highly applauded!

Everything you always wanted to know about vegetables and more! There are great recipes and great histories of each vegetable. Did you know the French don't like the leaves of the Swiss Chard, just the stem? Well, I didn't know that, even though I've been eating Swiss Chard.

The book is arranged by family of plant. The information is great. The recipes look very good. For the Amazon price, the book is great.

I received this book as a gift and have been delighted with it. The photography is gorgeous and the recipes delicious and very simple to prepare. A variety of vegetables from around the world are featured as well as old favorites, so one will never get bored from this book. Highly recommended!

I got this book hoping to spark my boyfriend's and my imagination. However, this book offers no advice. It tells you basically everything you alredy know or will know as soon as you've been out for a year or two. The positions that they display could be imagined by any 14 year-old boy with a hormone surge. The advice on relationships and how to maintain them is good, but any guy with enough common sense to effectly and successfuly solve his relationship problems without the aid of Jerry Springer will not benefit from this book.

This illustrated book reminds us how to really enjoy all the sensual pleasures of sex with another man. For anyone who has found himself in a rut of "quickies," this may inspire you to create more fulfilling sexual experiences.

After going through the various stretching, pubic conditioning, and sexual endurance excercises described in this book, my boyfriend could not beleive the positions I was able to accomplish! This book is fabulous! This book was the key I needed to unlock my latent sexual powers, and it was also the spark needed to ignite Raul's and my sexual relationship. I came out of the closet only a short time ago, and "The Gay Kama Sutra," with it's soothing and confident tone, gave me the courage I needed to enjoy my lifestyle and its fiery sexuality. Although this book did have a plethera of pleasing positions (my, what an alliteration!), it was a bit lacking in the "Advanced" category. But if you are enticed by positional names such as the "Shanghai Clam" and the "Reverse Butterfly," I strongly encourage you to purchase this book.

Spencer is trying to write a history of homosexuality that is not philosophical like Foucault's opus. He traces what I would call gayness from the BC era to the present day. This would be a good book for those unfamiliar with gay history. However, this book felt Eurocentric to me; he mentions little about well-researched areas of same-sex love in Asia or Native America. Also, Spencer's work is cursory; other authors have gone into depth in many of his topic areas. I liked Neil Miller's book on gay and lesbian history since the invention of the word "homosexuality" in the mid-1800s better than this book. This book is also male focused and may rub lesbian and bisexual women the wrong way. Still, for first-time readers of gay studies, this may be a good, initial, comprehensive book.