Reviews for The Sporting News Pro Football Guide 1994

The average rating for The Sporting News Pro Football Guide 1994 based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-09-22 00:00:00 Daniel Meyers Gardening books about flower color abound. Those about flower scents are few and far between. Undoubtedly the most comprehensive guide to plant scents (including the really bad) is Louise Beebe Wilder's "The Fragrant Path," originally published in 1932. The updated 1996 paperback version brings Wilder's incredible plant knowledge to a new generation of gardeners, further helped by updated names of the plants she loved (and sometimes detested). The contents include scented plants by their season of flowering, from early spring through autumn, scented shrubs hardy enough to survive in Wilder's New York state garden (and another chapter of scented shrubs and trees for southern gardens) and, of course, an entire chapter of rose scents from "the tea scent, the odours of spice and musk and of honey, even that of violets" to "the pungent odour of ripe strawberries" to remind gardeners and even casual readers of the myriad variations of fragrance. After reading Wilder's comments, I found myself stopping on walks to smell the flowers along the way. I already knew buddleja blossoms smell like honey but not that the blooms of Vitex agnus-castus, the chaste tree naturalized in my neighborhood are fragrant. And I was pleased to see Wilder realized that annual lupins such as the Texas state flower, bluebonnets, are beautifully scented when growing in masses. (To her nose, it's "a honeylike scent," although she mentions Gertrude Jekyll's opinion of "a very good and delicate pepper." Texas readers will want to smell for themselves during the spring season of bloom.) Wilder also includes a chapter entitled, "Plants of Evil Odour," with a list of horrors to shudder happily through. Still another deals with the scents of nonflowering plants (or near plants) -- ferns and mushrooms. For readers used to the impeccable prose of such gardener/writers as gardeners as Gertrude Jekyll or Elizabeth Lawrence, the self-conscious artiness of Wilder's writing can sometimes be trying. But her acute nose, wide range of plant knowledge and sheer love of flowers will give "The Fragrant Path" a permanent place on my gardening bookshelf.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-01-26 00:00:00 William White I found the editing very awkward after first reading the facsimile edition titled The Fragrant Garden. They added in many new hybrid peonies to a list, but with no description of the scent of the peonies, just catalogue-like write-ups of their appearances. I approved of the deletion of a few lines that were no longer politically correct (the book was originally written in 1932), but they changed sentences that must have seemed to them like politically incorrect mentions of scentless roses and so on. It's one thing to update the botanical names, which I appreciated, but no need to change the descriptions of the cultivars available in Mrs. Wilder's day.