Richardson Books

A beautiful and informative book. The pictures are well taken and useful for identification. The descriptions are well arranged with headers, making the information easy to compare between two species. The excellent descriptions also make it a useful study guide. The only deficiency is the lack of a key which makes it less useful as a field guide. However, for the experienced professional or amateur botanist who can often guess the family, the excellent pictures make it useful for identification.
This book should be in the library of any serious student of botany who is interested in Texas or Gulf Coast plants.

[Wildflowers and Other Plants of Texas Beaches and Islands by Alfred Richardson], Native Plant Society News, 20 (May-June 2002): 9.

As summer approaches, the lure of the Texas shoreline intensifies. It is hard to resist the seaside's arresting sunrises, whispering breezes, rustling surf, and expansive sand dunes crowned by swaying sea oats (Uniola paniculata) or seacoast bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium). In such a vast setting, however, it is easy to overlook the subtler features of the landscape, specifically the often quiet array of coastal native flowers. This more restrained floral texture of the coastal terrain of our state is the subject of Alfred Richardson's lavishly produced Wildflowers and Other Plants of the Texas Beaches and Islands.

Many who already own a Texas wildflower field guide may wonder whether they also need this particular work when identifying coastal plants. This is a reasonable question. So I compared Richardson's Wildflowers with Theodore F. Niehaus's Field Guide to Southwestern and Texas Wildflowers, Geyata Ajilvsgi's Wildflowers of Texas, Campbell and Lynn Loughmiller's Texas Wildflowers, Delena Tull and George Oxford Miller's A Field Guide to Wildflowers, Trees and Shrubs of Texas, and especially James H. Everitt and D. Lynn Drawe's Trees, Shrubs and Cacti of South Texas. My comparison disclosed that there were a large number of plants included in Richardson's book that appeared in only one of these other useful volumes. For the purpose of identifying these particular plants, in other words, you would need to own (and carry) all five of these guides.

Equally persuasive concerning the value of Richardson's Wildflowers are the considerable number of plants it lists that are not found in any of the other five volumes. Exclusive to Richardson's book are, for example, the tiny pink pyramid flower (Melochia pyramidata), the blue funnels of Ojo de Víbora (Evolvulus alsinoides var. hirticaulis), the yellow-eyed fringed disks of Corpus Christi fleabane (Erigeron procumbens), the marigold-looking false dandelion (Pyrrhopappus pauciflorus), the sun-splashed branches of seaside goldenrod (Solidago sempervirens), and the lemony disks of showy nerveray (Tetragonotheca repanda). There are other plants that could be named here as well, but even this short list suggests that native-plant enthusiasts heading for the coast would benefit immensely from owning Richardson's book.

His volume is also handsomely produced, a pleasure to peruse even at home. The close-up photographs of 275 plants are large in scale, extraordinary in detail, and rich in color. The size and lucidity of these 316 photographs will facilitate efforts to identify flora in the field. As befits a field guide, moreover, the explanatory text is presented succinctly in an outline format: plant family, scientific name, leaf description, flower profile, fruit identification, habitat summary, bloom period, and overall observation. Most of the textual entries are comprised of a single sentence or simply a few words.

Richardson's book is so attractive and rewarding that I am reluctant to express my slight caveat. The volume is arranged by floral families, and these families are associated in terms of their inter-relationships and similarities, with their respective genera presented alphabetically. Such an organization appeals to the botanist's desire for taxonomic order. But for the average person in the field, a guide with flowers grouped by color tends to be more efficient and effective in enabling the identification of a plant. However, I want to affirm that this disadvantage is very minor and in no way measurably detracts from the considerable value of Wildflowers and Other Plants of Texas Beaches and Islands. At once beautiful and useful, this field guide is the perfect "beach book" for nature enthusiasts.

William J. Scheick, a former NPSOT vice-president, is also a member of the Central Texas Horticulture Council and a frequent contributor to Texas Gardener.

For students struggling to understand what it means to do qualitative research, Laurel Richardson's book on Writing Strategies is an excellent resource. The book is very helpful in differentiating conventional forms of scientific writing from the more interpretive forms of writing that are typical of qualitative research. The book is very readable. Richardson makes complex ideas accessible.

Richardson's book initiated deep and reflective dialogue on the nature of qualitative writing, particularly from the voices of scientist, researcher, feminist, and representative of the academic world to the general public.

Her work is strongly recommended as required reading for every graduate student engaged in qualitative work, as well as experienced researchers and those entrenched within quantitative methodology.

Since its first publication in 1996, the YAJ has attracted the work of some of the finest angling writers across the world. It has also reprinted selections of classic angling literature and poetry and reproduced a varied and excellent assortment of art and photography. Over the years, YAJ has featured work from James Prosek, Nick Lyons, Ernest Schweibert, Howell Raines, Jimmy Carter, Robert Behnke, Elliot Richardson, Roderick L. Haig-Brown, Richard Brautigan, and other well-known figures. Some of these pieces are excerpts from previous work or new pieces submitted to YAJ. In addition to the writing of prominent authors, the YAJ has published excellent new work by unknown writers. Submissions to the YAJ are open to anyone and it has consistently attracted a high level of prose, poetry, art, and photography.

The YAJ is published bi-annually with yearly subscriptions offered at $20 per year, two-year subscriptions for $30, and back issues sold for $12 each. Approximately 1,000 current subscribers support the journal along with a roster of patrons, editorial board, and advisors. It has offices on campus in New Haven where the issues are prepared under the supervision of a faculty advisor. All subscriptions and individual orders are fulfilled by undergraduates. YAJ issues are perfect-bound paperbacks with just over 100 pages of text and images printed on a digital press in black-and-white with a four-color cover. The trim size is 5 \ × 8 \.

I found the Yale Anglers' journal a refreshing perspective on the fishing world. It focuses on the literature and art of fishing, an interesting topic that has been largely ignored. This is the inaugural issue, and after reading it, I ordered a subscription. I cannot strongly enough reccomend the Journal for all anglers interested in not just how to fish, but why.

So much practical information on "how to get extradoniary results from ordinary people," including myself. Why is it out of print? It should be on the national best seller list.

This is one of the best histories written on the practitioners of Western Esoteric Occultism at the turn of the century. Richardson does and admirable job of introducing the Seymour/Hartley diaries and includes some never before published G.D. meditations.

Wendy Richardson, author of The Link Between ADHD and Addiction and When Too Much Isn't Enough, creates a 2-CD set of a presentation recorded at the Kitty Petty Institute for Focus on Women and Girls.

This is an excelent text composed and written well in a clear and organized manner. I highly reccomend it to anyone sudying Administrative law as a paralegal.

I had Dr. Richardson as a professor at Louisiana State University, and this book is just amazing. It is based on his notes that he used to teach Advanced Calculus, which was by far the most useful class I've ever taken so far as an undergraduate. His writing is clear, and will provide a thorough understanding of the subject. In a few years this book will surely be a classic, along with Rudin and such.

This is not your average reprint of Henry Fielding's classic Joseph Andrews. The rowdy and improbable misadventures of a virtuous youth in an unchaste world (or so Fielding would have it) are here presented in a heavy trade paperback well illustrated by Haydon Jones.

The author first hand acount make this book one of the best ever written. Bruce Richardson the author made numerous trips to Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion. He provide a great analysis of the war and Afghans freedom fighters.