Cacti in Brazil
This book is a pictorial celebration of Brazil and its unique succulent flora including many wonderful, large format habitat photographs. The text describes the main cactus genera and gives an insight into the history of cactus research in Brazil and the people who did it.
366 colour pictures (many large format), 2 colour maps. 176 pages, bilingual German and English (all the text is in both languages). 24 x 31cm (larger than A4), hardbound in cloth with a dust jacket.
The book is priced at just £26.00 plus £ 3.00 p. & p. for delivery to an address in the UK or EU. Payment is also possible by a cheque in Euros at 45.00 per book, including carriage.
The book is published and available now:
Please send payment in advance, by cheque drawn on a UK bank or Eurocheque for £ 29, or cheque for Euro 45.00 payable to G. Charles, to:
Graham Charles, Briars Bank, Fosters Bridge, Ketton, Stamford, PE9 3UU, England E-mail: graham.charles@btinternet.com
Kakteen in Brasilien
Die Herausgeber stellen Brasilien und seine einzigartige Sukkulentenvielfalt mit herrlichen, teilweise großfor matigen Standortaufnahmen vor. Die wesentlichen Gattungen werden beschrieben, ebenso erfolgt ein Einblick in der Geschichte der Kakteenforschung.
176 Seiten, 366 zum Teil ganz seitige Farbbilder, 2 farbige Übersichtskarten, zweisprachig (deutsch/englisch), Format 24 x 31 cm Leineneinband mit Schutzumschlag.
Der Buchpreis beträgt DM 79.- zuzüglich DM 7.- Versandspesen bei Versand innerhalb Deutschlands bzw. DM 9,- Versandspesen bei Versand ins Ausland. Versand nur gegen Vorauskasse (Bar, Euroscheck oder Überweisung).
Bestellungen bei: Andreas Hofacker, Neuweiler Straße 8/1, D-71032 Böblingen Telefon 07031/ 273524, Telefax 07031 /733560, E-Mail: andreashofacker@germanynet.de
Bankverbindung:
Kreissparkasse Böblingen (BLZ 603 501 30), Konto-Nr. 2 315 360
(Bitte Namen und Anschrift deutlich lesbar angeben)
REVIEW by Dr Tony Mace
This is in an unusual book in many respects and I am going to start by recommending you to buy it if you are at all interested in the Cacti of Brazil. The volume and quality of the colour photographs is exceptional for the modest price. The description of the book as a pictorial celebration of Brazilian cacti is very accurate and the publication does not aspire to be more than this.
The text throughout is in german and english. This inevitably makes design a bit tricky, but the relatively limited amount of text minimises the problems this causes. The first part of the book concerns the history of the exploration for cacti in Brasil and gives biographies of the most important players. The other text comments on the main groups of plants. The text contains all sorts of interesting information and has the great merit that it does not simply parrot information available elsewhere. I slightly regretted that it is not apparent who wrote whch sections of text. There is also apparently no attribution of the photographs to the individual authors which I would have liked.
The book certainly contains many fine photographs, many of exceptional plants. A couple of things about them slightly worried me. Some of the full page pictures seemed slightly less sharp than one would like. I had an interesting point of comparison in that two days after I received my review copy of this book I recieved the lastest copy of Piante Grasse (the Italian Cactus Society magazine) with an article by Dr Willi Strecker which duplicated a few of the photographs in the book. Those in the magazine seem slightly crisper. I have a suspicion that somewhere in the image processing process a piece of equiment was being used near its limit. The rotary high resolution scanners used by commercial image processing companies are very expensive pieces of equipment and this can often be the weakest link if flat bed scanners are used.
The second point about the pictures is that I could not discern a great deal of logic in their arrangement in the text. This may be deliberate in that it creates the effect of never being sure what to expect when you turn the page and I think creating an effect of enjoyment and celebration of the plants and pictures. It may become annoying at a later stage if you are trying to look up a picture you remember.
The book contains photographs of buildings, the local inhabitants, habitats and other plants such as bromeliads and passifloras which is fine for this type of book, but I do wish a little more attempt had been made to identify the species of these latter plants. One final strange omission is that I could not find a publication date in the book which future bibliographers are really going to love.
The book is self published by the group of authors and is only available direct from them except in North America where I beleive Rainbow Gardens is the sole distributor. It is partly by limiting distribution in this way that the publication price has been kept so low.
Digg