This may rank as "The Book I Own With the Oddest Backstory." I was visiting a local thrift shop and saw this on their shelves. I have Stewart's The Drunken Botanist so I picked it up, and was quickly fascinated with the artwork inside. When I went to check out, the owner told me the book was free, because a landlord had called her in to clear out the apartment of a drug dealer and she had found it there. We both thought it was strangely appropriate, but verging on scary, for a drug dealer to have a reference book on poisonous plants!
This is a small book, with a lot of illustrations. It won't take you long to read through it. I picked off chapters here and there before bed and on car rides, and really enjoyed it. There's not a lot of detail, and sometimes you want more information, but overall it's an entertaining work and not meant to be encyclopedic. Some of the gruesome illustrations are silly, but the full page etchings of plants are gorgeous. Many of them almost look fossilized. I'll paste one in so you can see what I mean.
Final call:
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Lightweight and entertaining. I'm seriously considering pulling out a few of the illustrations and framing them.
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