Fruit and Vegetable Books

This is tne most informative, well put together publication on Juice Fasting I've yet to see. It was a tremendous help to me on my most recent fast which lasted 12 days! I would recommend this thumbs up for anyone considering either a long term or a short term juice fast. Filled with all sorts of useful information on various situations one comes across while fasting. I've even stocked a bunch in my reception room (colon hydrotherapist) to sell to my clients!! One can sense the author has experienced first-hand all that he shares. Easy to read and understand. What are you waiting for? Order it now; you won't regret it!

The books is a nutshell to know why is detoxification important for us. The author has given different types of fasting methods to help us in detoxify our body.

Not too bad. Has some very useful information on Juicing and on Fasting. It does go somewhat overboard with claims.
Overall quite worthwhile for anyone wanting to fast using juices.

I bought this book to better help me in managing my Crohn's disease during flare-ups. I pretty much bought the book based on the title and thought it would be helpful.

The author right off the bat says that if you are going to fast, you REALLY need to fast without ANY intake of food except water, but if you are going to juice fast, this is how you do it. He concentrated more on fasting than juice fasting, which seems to make this book title mis-leading.

He also goes as far as saying that self-purging (finger down the throat) may be required to purge the body of inpurities. Whoa, time out, that is a bit extreme.

I cannot give the book just one star, because there was some good information in there about fasting symptoms and other general tid-bits, but since this author has absolutely no credentials, I would seriously question anything he suggests to do.

This is an excellent resource on WHY fasting can be beneficial and how to best accomplish it - different types of fasing, the benefits and potential problems with each, and how to accomplish the fast. If, however, you're looking for a book with specific receipies to follow while on a juice fast, the book is light.

This is a very informational book. I bought two, gave one to my 73 year old mother who just planted her first successful garden!

This is a well put together volume of information. Companion planting is the way to go for better yields, and natural insect control.

I have been a gardener for several years, and have enjoyed reading this book and using some of the suggestions.

This book has been great with helping to plant my garden using natural methods of pesticides. This is done by planting plants that repel insects and diseases next to each other. It is a very good way to keep from using chemical pesticides, and to get optimal yields of vegetables and fruits. I highly recomend it for the orgainic gardener or the beginning gardener. It is an exellant guide for all.

So much information in this little book. I loved this book and would recommend it to anyone with a garden!

I sent my mom the Field Guide to Produce for Mother's Day. She has always made her children eat fresh vegetables, but her love has always been fresh fruit. It is always difficult to know how to pick a good melon, or peaches that will ripen successfully into delectable treats. This book exceeds her expectations. I originally was going to get a book that I heard about on NPR radio called "How To Pick A Peach." The title is very clever and got my attention, as I'm sure the author meant it to. I would have purchased it except that the reviews here said that it wasn't as well organized and concise as the Field Guide. I've not yet seen the Field Guide myself, but when I do in a month as I head back east for vacation I will expand on this review.

This book is great. It has all the produce you can think of and the ones you can't and it tells you all you need to know about the way the food is grown. Wow Great book!!!

The Pros to this book: good info on description of fruits/veggies, when in season, tips for purchasing & what to avoid, storage, preparation and serving suggestions and flavor affinities, as well as a section in the center with photos.

The Cons: No nutritional information at all and tomatoes are classified as a vegetable, which is an odd mistake to make for a reference book, since tomatoes are technically a fruit.

This book gives good, basic, brief information about a variety of fruits and vegetables. I feel it pales in comparison, however, to Elizabeth Schneider's books on produce because her books are more detailed. I would say that if you like brevity you will like this book by Aliza Green, were it not that I feel your hard-earned money is better spent on the more detailed Schneider books.

So much of the advice in here is purely common sense ... and some of it is rather weird. Are there really readers out there who need to be told, when selecting fruits/veggies, to not buy things that are moldy or bruised or rotten? I was hoping for something a bit more profound.

And I couldn't believe my eyes when I read that apples should be kept in the fridge, because they'll go 'mealy' within 48 hours on the counter! Am I the only person in America who keeps apples on the counter for weeks without difficulty? (Well, assuming they don't get eaten up first.)

There is some interesting info on different varieties and cultivars, but even that is available elsewhere, and most of the content is a waste of time/money for anyone who already knows more than the basics.

IN AS MUCH AS THE WORD JUICE APPEARS MANY TIMES IN THIS BOOK IT IS STILL A BOOK
ABOUT HERBAL MEDICINE. MOST OF THE INFORMATION IS ABOUT HERBS. WHILE ALL OF THIS MAY
BE GOOD OR BAD, I WAS NOT EXPECTING HERBAL MEDICINE. HERBS MAY NOT HURT YOU AND THEN THEY MIGHT. I WAS JUST WANTING TO EAT BETTER. I GUESS I'LL HAVE TO TRY AGAIN.

This book is great. The Juicing Bible contained all of the information I have been looking for. It contains more than just juicing recipes, but also breaks down what to stay away from as well as uses for herbs, fruits, and vegetables in relation to a specific ailment for example diabetes or female infertility. The recipes are so simple to follow that my children even make thier own smoothies, and they are both delicious and healthy recipes. If you are not in the mood for juicing or a smoothy, The Juicing Bible also has simple recipes for tea as well.

This book is really great if you are looking for something comprehensive. It covers the health benefits of all herbs, fruits and veggies and then gives recipes specific to each item as well as recipes for any health deficiency. I really enjoyed this book and feel that is great for a beginner juicer as well as experienced.

A good book on juicing. This books gives a very general overview of the health benefits derived from juicing raw fruits and vegtables, and has many tasty recipes.

I read the reviews and thought I'd give this book a try and I have to say I'm somewhat disappointed. It's a very thorough book, but I don't need most of the information it gives. And the cross-sections are daunting. I really wanted a straight 'here's how to make yummy juices' book and this is not that kind of book. Too much information and too confusing for a novice juicer. Maybe when I'm more advanced I'll appreciate it, but for now I'm still looking for the perfect *simple* juicing book.

Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R1TS6AHKY4KN4C PHOTO SLIDESHOW: The pictures with this review are a daily account of the garden I raised last year using much of the advice from this book.

BOOK REVIEW: Chris Bird believes it's easier to grow a garden in raised beds, and in this book, he shows you how. Bird details the fundamentals of cubed foot gardening (how to build the boxes, space considerations, etc) and gives a brief introduction to the most popular vegetables grown in the US. He includes a useful season planting guide, which should be used instead of everyone's grandparents' methods like "plant corn two Mondays after the first dogwood bloom."

The most appealing aspect of the book is the personal voice of the author. More than a how-to guide, this is one man's story about his successes and failures. He even admits when his method may not be the best or points out his many setbacks in his life of gardening.

I was given this book one year after I started gardening in raised beds and have spent the last year correcting many of the mistakes I made on my own. Along with the seasonal planting guide and suggestions on which crops to plant, I learned creative designs for trellises and innovative planting techniques, including a brilliant "salt shaker" method of scattering small seeds evenly over an area.

This item was perfect, exactly what I was looking for to assist me with a new style of gardening. The book arrived looking brand new, not a scratch on it and with 5 days. Thank you this has been a rewarding experence.

If you're considering raised bed gardening, this book is a good place to begin planning. The info on building your containers and creating the proper soil are very informative.

Why go the expensive chemical route? It is safer, cheaper and better tasting to go organic-new scientific testing has proven what we already knew! So skip this book and get Square Foot Gardening instead.
JMSWilson

If you're into vegetable gardening then "Cubed Foot Gardening" is a good book to invest in. Bird gives good, practical advice on getting started, climate needs, where to put your garden, etc. He doe not tell anyone not to use organic, stating that it is the gardener's choice. On pg. 174 he states that the gardener should, "Try organic methods of insecticide first...", then "Spray chemical insecticides if necessary, on a limited basis..." This seems to contradict other posters who have been emphatic that he is "anti-organic". Maybe they didn't read the whole book. The vegetable guide on pg. 44-45 is very good. Overall this is an easy to read, very manageable to apply work.

This book was very helpful. I am just starting a 'balconey' garden.
The containers are helpful....the veggies are growing happily!
D.O.

I'm a serious organic gardener, with 4500 square feet of flowers, herbs and veggies. I have a good garden library and I'm glad to add this book. As far as I know, it is the only container gardening book that addresses organic vegetable growing. I used to think that tilling the earth was superior to container gardening. In recent years, however, time pressures have made me wonder about the viability of growing convenience items (lettuce, tomatoes, onions) close to my front and back doors in containers so that dinner would be easy to harvest. Having read this book, I'm ready to try it. A very quick and lively read, the book's only shortcoming is lack of adequate information on how to create your own self-watering pots.

This book starts out good and states that it's going to tell you how to make your own self-watering containers. However, once you get through all the initial fluff, I found the details necessary to actually follow through on the author's suggestions to be extremely limited. The author discusses how to make any pot self-watering, but uses a ready made insert. Then he does not say where to get the ready made insert from. Parts of the book read more like a pat on the back to his own successes with pictures from his own garden. That's great, but I bought the book to learn how to set up my own self-watering system which I still am at a loss after reading the book. I was very disappointed.

Incredible Vegetables From Self-watering Containers is a book I purchased for my daughter. She lives in Show Low Az. in a wooded area and the soil is not that good. So she thought she would try growing some veggies in containers this year. I bought the book for her to give her some ideas on how to do it. She has a green thumb and was brought up on a farm so she loves to grow things. I would recomend this book to anyone wanting to grow anything in containers.

I have read a lot of gardening books, but this is one of the all time best!! It is full of facts, as opposed to general descriptions. "A full grown tomato takes a gallon of water a day." as opposed to some vague keep it well watered that you get in so many books.
It is precise, without being dry. Written with a sense of humor, as well as common sense. I found a lot of very useful information, even though I am a seasoned gardener, and a novice would find this invaluable. The information I found was accurate, and as importantly, explained. I love to know the "why" behind something.
I must also comment on the pictures. They are good pictures of exactly the plant being talked about. You could easily identify an unknown plant from the pictures and descriptions. That is rare...most books show plants from too far away, or in a grouping...neither of which is helpful to me.
All and all, this is my favorite gardening book of all time!! If I had to list a fault, I would be hard pressed to come up with one. Perhaps a bit more on the section on making a self watering pot at home. The basics are all there, but I would have like a bit more on the bigger containers, like how to turn a whiskey barrel into a self-waterer. And to go along with that, a few resourses on parts (as opposed to finished units.)

This is a useful book that has given us advice on picking as well as storing fruits. Clues not previously known

This book has a few interesting chapters but overall it misses the mark. Each chapter describes a different fruit or vegetable along with a few recipes. Any food lover will be disappointed and not learn much.

As others have mentioned, this book is a nice reference and fun to read. I have tried only a few recipes, but they have all been WONDERFUL. To me, they give the ideal kinds of insights for simple ways to prepare food more effectively which can be extrapolated beyond the exact recipe. After trying the beet/cuc/feta salad, and not having much experience with beets, I continued to make a cold beet salad for my 3yearold all summer, at her request! Also, after preparing eggplant in ways I was accustomed and accepting that my daughter didn't like it, I tried his recipe for steamed eggplant (go figure!) and again my 3yearold loved it! (So did I. It's now my favorite eggplant preparation as well.)

Great food always starts with great ingredients. According to my teachers at the Culinary Institute, the aspiring home cook can learn no more important lesson. The CIA spends a great deal of time teaching students how to do just that, but their books tend to be large and filled with lots of additional information.

My paperback copy of How to Pick a Peach: The Search for Flavor from Farm to Table by Russ Parsons captures much of that information in a very handy volume. Parsons is a staff writer and the former food editor for "The Los Angeles Times." His approach is similar to that of Harold McGee (see On Food and Cooking, for example): direct, practical, informed and very readable.

Parsons recognizes the reality of many grocery aisles: "tomatoes that taste like cotton; peaches that will never drip; strawberries that could bend a fork." He has written short chapters on fruits and vegetables from apples to winter squash, together with over a hundred recipes. His writing shines: "With its overlapping rows of hard prickly petals, [an artichoke] seems only one step removed from a stick with a nail stuck in it."

The book covers 42 categories of fruits and vegetables arranged by season. The organization is a little confusing, but the excellent Index makes navigation easy and accurate. The index is particularly helpful in distinguishing the several biographies of the ingredients and the practical hints to choosing high quality ingredients.

Parson's recipe for parsnip soup is particularly good and representative of his style:

"This is a somewhat plainer version of a recipe by the San Francisco chef Jeremiah Tower. (He garnishes his version with shaved white truffles.) It's also really, really good with sour cream.

Ingredients
1 lb. parsnips
1 Tbsp. butter
1 onion, chopped
1 medium boiling potato, peeled and diced
~ Salt
3½ cups water, plus more if needed
1 sprig tarragon
1 sprig parsley
¼ cup sour cream

Steps

1. Working lightly with a vegetable peeler, peel the parsnips, then cut off the bottoms and tops. Continuing to use the vegetable peeler, cut away and save the rest of each parsnip down to its woody core, catching the thin slices in a wide pot. The color of the vegetable will change from creamy white to ivory when you get to the core. Discard the core.

2. Add the butter, onion, potato, and 1 teaspoon salt to the pot, along with cup water. Place the pot over low heat, cover it tightly, and cook slowly, "sweating" the vegetables until they begin to become tender, about 15 minutes. Stir from time to time to keep the vegetables from sticking and scorching. If necessary, add a little more water.

3. Add the tarragon and parsley and continue to sweat for another 5 minutes. Add 3 cups water, increase the heat to medium, and cook, uncovered, until the vegetables are completely tender, about 10 minutes.

4. Discard the tarragon and parsley sprigs and, using a slotted spoon, transfer as much as you can of the solids from the pot to a blender. With the lid of the blender removed, pulse to chop the vegetables. If necessary, add a little water. Once the vegetables are chopped, blend on the lowest speed and gradually work your way up to the highest. At first the vegetables will jump up the sides, but then they'll subside and remain at much the same level no matter the speed of the blender. With the motor running, add the rest of the liquid and any vegetables left over in the pot and purée until completely smooth.

5. Wipe out the pot to remove any bits of vegetables, then pour the puréed soup back into it. Heat through over low heat. Taste for salt.

6. Beat the sour cream with a spoon to soften it. Divide the soup among four warmed soup bowls, drizzle in a bit of sour cream in a decorative pattern, and serve.

And here are a couple of samples of Parson's hints on finding great ingredients:

A good watermelon should "sound hollow when thumped lightly." The reason: large cavities form inside the ripened fruit. An additional personal hint: if you buy a watermelon already cut, perhaps covered with clear plastic wrap, pick watermelons with large cavities, not the ones that are smooth and completely flat.

When selecting citrus and tomatoes, go for items that feel heavy for their size; lighter ones will have lost moisture and have a pulpy mouth feel.

"Mature fruit that hung on the tree long enough to develop the sugar will have a distinctive orange cast . . . trust your nose: fruit that is ripe and delicious will always smell that way." In particular, "When you buy [peaches] at the right time of year, however, when the local farmers have filled the markets with them, these fragrant treasures go for pennies. They'll even be cheap enough that you can afford to buy the very best. And that's the time you want to pick a peach."

Altogether, I found this a very handy book to refresh my memory of what constitutes excellent ingredients, particularly handy in the paperback size when shopping.


Robert C. Ross 2008

I've heard that the juice of a really good peach will run down your arms all the way to your elbows. One acturally did make it almost to my elbows the other day. Not the kind of peaches you most often find in a supermarket, with only one peach in many having any juice or flavor.

The question is, "How do you select and store fresh fruits and vegies to insure the mzxium excllence in taste and texture?" The answers are found in Russ Parsons' well written book, "How To Pick a Peach." He classisfies each fruit and vegetable by season and not only tells you how to pick the best ones, but also how to store and prepare them. Russ also gives you several simple receipies for using each fruit and vegetable.

Some fragile vegies such as peas, corn and green beans should be eaten right after they are purchased. Some vegies, such as potatoes, onions, tomatoes and winter squash should never be refrigerated. When refrigerated the starch in potatoes turns to sugar and they lose flavor. This was new to me.

He gives an intersting short history of each fruit and vegie. He also gives a history of industrial farming and the cost of compromise when big farmers take over the production of our porduce, which I really enjoyed. Now that I have read "How To Pick a Peach" it will make a valuable referance tool.

The book others imitate. The difinitive source of information about sustainable gardening (agriculture on any scale, actually), with understandable diagrams and explanations. The concepts are simple; the work much easier than the old-fashioned "row garden"; the results are more bountiful; your health benefits; the fertility of your soil grows; the environment improves.

This will become your bible for planting and growing without chemical fertilizers, insecticides, or weed control.

The sustainable methods of producing the food we eat in a small space makes more sense than the wastful techniques perfected and promoted in the last two generations.

If you can buy only one book on gardening -- this should be the one.

Other resources to consider: "The Backyard Homestead" (Jeavons, et al); "Square Foot Gardening" (Bartholomew) - similar ideas; "Five Acres And Independence" (Kains).

Survival is simpler if it has been your way of life.

After reading the reviews of others, I excitedly bought this book. It turned out to be a relic of the 70's, with all kinds of abstract philosophizing about how putting organic matter into soil is going to save the world. Perhaps revolutionary for its time, it's not very useful for the serious modern gardener.

Although this thin book has gone through five reprints, the passing years seem to have added little in the way of real information. Sure, knowing how to turn soil with hand tools and make a compost pile is useful, but most modern books handle that in a couple of pages. The book's policy of zero tolerance for chemical fertilizer and pesticides is an admirable ideal but a tad too stringent for me. I found the "charts" little more than unfinished notes that were largely indecipherable. The book offers dubious, sometimes contradictory, advice, including instructions on planting by the phases of the Moon. Sources for supplies are referenced with old-fashioned snail-mail addresses rather than 1-800 numbers or URLs. The book has no index!

Frankly, much of the text seems to be self-promotion for the Cause, worthy as it may be, rather than offering solid gardening tips. If you really want to grow more vegetables, get Dick Raymond's Joy of Gardening. He's plenty "green" and offers practical approaches to getting food out of the ground.

This book is suposed to revolutionize how home gardeners around the world can become self sustaining and yet it can't even be published using metric measures! How do they translate this to other languages and don't even bother using a measurement system that the majority of the world uses?? What a careless oversite on the part of the publisher AND author.
...

This book is not just about growing more vegetables in the vein of "Throw some more ferterlizer on in the garden!" This book is about a way of life, a philosophy. It gives one a whole systems view of healthy, living soil creation and plant growing. When one reads, absorbs and applies the material, it becomes almost a religious experience.

This title grew from a 1971 experimental garden in Palo Alto, California instigated by Alan Chadwick and Stephen Kafka. That garden showed that using the biodynamic/French Intensive method produced four times more vegetables than conventional techniques.

Biodynamic techniques were developed by Austrian genius Rudolf Steiner. French Intensive methods were developed in the 1890s by market gardeners outside Paris, a time when horses provided more-than-ample fertilizer and the city provided a ready market for vegetables. Chadwick studied under Steiner and French gardeners.

The method requires double-digging garden beds and adding compost or aged manure. Double-digging to two feet in depth provides loose soil that roots easily penetrate. Plants are seeded or transplanted very close together and form a living mulch, shading roots, causing greater water retention, denying sunlight to weeds. Other aspects of the method are planting and transplanting by the phases of the moon and daily sprinkling rather than periodical flooding.

This material has been recycled four times since the 1974 typewritten edition. I regret to report it is no longer up-to-date gardening knowledge, it will intimidate beginning gardeners, and it will bore experienced gardeners. There is only one new chapter, titled Sustainability, which is mostly promotion of Ecology Action. In addition, Jeavons seems confused. In the first four editions he wrote that he was teaching us the "biodynamic/French intensive method" of Steiner and French gardeners as learned and taught by Chadwick. Now in a chapter titled A Perspective for the Future, he writes that his work is based on the "Chinese Biointensive way of farming." Yet nowhere does he advocate or tell how to use humanure, which is the basis of Chinese food production, as first shown by F.H. King in his book, Farmers of Forty Centuries. Only in the bibliography do we find book listings under the heading: Human Waste. The huge bibliography (36 pages, was 22 pages in the last edition) apparently lists every book and catalog in the Ecology Action library but there is NO INDEX! I find the lack of an index in a nonfiction book to be unforgivable. For instance, looking for crop rotation or mulching methods means scanning the entire 201 pages--and coming up empty.

There are pages and pages of drawings and technical charts that most readers will never use. We find listings of plants and information both barely usable--seeds per ounce, pounds consumed per average person per year--and important--bed spacing, yields--although there is no recognition or advice concerning the many soil types and growing zones. One is dismayed to find--in a book titled How to Grow More Vegetables--more pages of charts about grain, protein source, vegetable oil crops; cover, organic matter, fodder crops; energy, fiber paper and other crops; tree and cane crops--20 pages in all, than about vegetable crops--8 pages.

Promotion of Ecology Action uses a fourteen-page chapter in addition to six more pages of self-promotion in the Sustainability chapter. If you want to support Jeavons' work, send a check to Ecology Action, or buy his book, The Sustainable Vegetable Garden, adapted from this book by co-author Carol Cox, which is smaller and less expensive and has all his best stuff without the wasted pages of charts, drawings and promotion, and it has an index! If you want current gardening information, read authors such as Eliot Coleman and Dick Raymond who are progressive and work with all garden designs, including the mulch method first popularized by Ruth Stout and now used by hundreds of my gardening friends across the country. Most of us have tried the double-dig method and have long since moved on. I recommend you not waste your time, except maybe once for new gardens, depending on soil conditions. Thereafter, use mulch, save your back and spend your time and energy on better pursuits.

This is a good book for the beginers that want to start their experience with a "hands on" material

i have read the book. I believe the writer is very expert in this field too.
But, some lines worries me.
e.g. from 10pm to 2pm
review: could it be 10am-2pm ? or 10pm-2am ??

e.g. low light condition, to slow growth increase EC.
review: no explanation found why. increase food?

i hope he can get his expertees and knowledge available to public more clearly through clearer writing or an editor.

my third book from him, is on the way to my mailbox. I hope the writing is better.
HOPE

This is the fourth book on hobby hydroponics that I've purchased and I think that it contains a lot of useful information for such a thin, fast read. It does a very good job explaining how to set up a NFT (nutrient film technique) system for tomatoes. It is also told me that tomatoes prefer a pH between 6.3 and 6.5. I had previously read the range was 5.5 to 6.5 and keeping the pH at the higher level has seemed to really improve the health of the plant and the rate of growth. I discover new tomatoes growing on my single plant almost every day now!

After reading a rather scathing review posted on Amazon.com entitled "Get an editor" I chose not to order this book. Later, I happened across the book at Borders, thumbed through and purchased it. The book is is excellent!

I believe the review misleads readers. I will address the two specific criticisms: Bad chemistry? Resh very carefully explains the concept of PH ( the reviewer missed this)-reference to a PH of 4.0 as very acidic was relative to the PH needs of tomatoes and, in fact, 4.0 is very acidic for a tomato (just a fact of life, not bad chemistry). Sulphuric acid for novices? Resh talks about sulphuric acid/hydroxides because they are, indeed, used within hydroponics (see hydroponic supply web sites). However, he is very clear that he does not recommend their use and lists the same reasons given by the reviewer (somehow the reviewer overlooked this also).Resh goes on to recommend specific safety measures for those who insist on their use.

The book is clearly written, well illustrated and extremely practical. I have read it twice and highly recommend it.

Dr. Resh's book is copyrighted 2003 but was first published in 1993 and it looks like there were no updates or revisions in this version. The information he gives is good solid technique and practice that is the basis of any hydroponic system. I would put this in the beginner to intermediate knowledge range. His diagrams of systems are strictly from a homemade point of view but the art of building DIY systems has grown tremendously since he wrote this 12 years ago. One last note - in his resource lists there is not one mention of the internet.
I'll keep this book on my shelf for the next time someone asks me how do you do it.

LOSING PLUM BLOSSOM offers a multitude of insights into Oriental charisma, obsessions with purity of bloodlines, as well as intrigue & religion, their attitude about gaijin - Westerners/foreigners, & love itself!

Rebeccasreads recommends LOSING PLUM BLOSSOM as an epic saga of passionate & lengthy prose of the lives & thoughts of one woman & two men, as well as a superb glimpse into the history of Taiwan few readers in the world have yet heard: from the Ching dynasty, through Japanese colonialism to Nationalist rule & its Golden Age in the 1960s & 70s.

Taipei (Taiwan) resident and Chinese Culture University
professor Eleanor Morris Wu has written a powerful and moving new novel, in
English, and the 500 page
page turner is a novel of romance, intrigue and adventure that will surely captivate readers interested in Asian culture.
And it's about Taiwan, among other things, and it's the first in a series of novels Wu is writing,
with the second novel coming soon. Wu herself witnessed the latter part of the struggle
for democracy and

political freedom when she arrived in Taiwan in 1989, old
China hands will recognize many things. The author knows her history and has an uncanny knack at getting inside her characters' emotions, from priests to spies, and you won't be able to put this book down once you start. It's that kind of book. A bravura performance by a talented writer, with more books sure to come!

I have already read the reviews of four distinguished Asian hands: Messrs Wade, Bufton, Barnes, and Hamilton so there is nothing more historically I can add that has not already been said by them.
I was very favourably impressed by the Prose style of Ms Morris Wu. It reminded me a little of Marcel Proust's "A La Recherche du Temps Perdu". She likes to dwell on images and incidents for pages at a time. In her case she can command the reader's attention throughout. It takes a particular talent to do that and I think it is a remarkable achievement especially as it is Ms Morris Wu's first novel.
I would like therefore to recommend this book for anyone interested in Taiwan history with four stars****as I want to encourage the author to continue writing, bearing in mind the comments and improvements recommended by the afore-mentioned reviewers.

I have already read the reviews of four distinguished Asian hands: Messrs Wade, Bufton, Barnes and Hamilton so there is nothing more historically I can add that has not already been said by them.
I was very favourably impressed by the Prose style of Ms Morris Wu. It reminded me a little of Marcel Proust's "A La Recherche du Temps Perdu". She likes to dwell on images and incidents for pages at a time. In her case she can command the reader's attention throughout. It takes a particular talent to do that and I think it is a remarkable achievement especially as it is Ms Morris Wu's first novel.
I would like therefore to recommend this book for anyone interested in Taiwanese history with four stars****as I want to encourage the author to continue writing, bearing in mind the comments and improvements recommended by the afore-mentioned reviewers.

The author has depicted a poignant picture spanning five decades beginning with the close of the Japanese occupaiton in Taiwan and the subsequent turmoil caused by the Chinese Nationalists takeover in 1945 and the tragic massacre two years later.
What followed were the decades regarded by most foreigners and Chinese alike as Taiwan's Golden Age of the 60s and the 70s when the island made a spectacular economic take-off despite political repression.
Morris Wu witnessed the latter part of the struggle for democracy and political freedom when she arrived in 1989. Though she claims the main characters to be ficticious, yet to many old Taiwan hands, they are still readily recognizable. With her acute observation and meticulous details, the author attempted to open up the body and the mind of her leading lady with Freud-Nietzsche-like incision, culminating in the triumph of American Womanhood.
Her similar attempts on males, mostly men of intrigues and evils, will go down as brilliant negative examples for schools.
Despite dark smog looming over all the characters, the author aptly painted the beautiful landscape of Taiwan and explained the many traditions and customs and the unending social and political wrangling among the local Taiwanese and the Chinese from the mainland.
Morris Wu also has a profound understanding of Taiwan's historical legacy from the Ching dynasty, through Japanese colonialism to Nationalist rule, and gives readers unfamiliar with the East Asian region an interesting and useful lesson about Oriental charisma and intrigues.