Reviews for Plants of life, plants of death

The average rating for Plants of life, plants of death based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-02-24 00:00:00 George Swan An EXHAUSTIVELY researched book on the history, folklore/mythology and ethnobotany of certain plants with a long connection with life and death and religion, some of them are so connected with their 'peoples' as to be inseparable. There is a wealth of information and even I who thought I knew a lot about plants and their folklore, learned quite a bit. My only gripe is that it seemed heavily India-centric, I know that no one really cares about plants in Africa, but I do. I'd either like a wide perspective or a Eurocentric perspective, I was sort of disappointed with just a European and Indian perspective with one Chinese plant, ginseng, thrown in, but I know he has to sell the book and everyone knows about ginseng and Holy Basil, unless you know nothing about herbalism, so he had to include them. I guess I'm just picky and would like to learn about something not well known. But that's my own complaint and other than that, this is a good book, well worth the read.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-02-06 00:00:00 Hernan Romero Meh. Good concept but only so-so delivery. The stories didn't all fit the author's declared purpose/framework and she veered away from her theme far too often in her author shorts inserted between tales. In fact, they came across as quite self-indulgent. Also it rang as an afterthought (and somewhat cheap, at that) to invoke 9/11 as the logic behind this collection. All in all, I expected something much more flowing and cohesive. Especially after the glowing intro that painted her as Scheherazade.