I received my seven volumes of The Illustrated History of APPLES in the United States and Canada this week. The series is beautifully bound, with quality paper and ink.
I appreciate Scott’s review above and I agree with his analysis. Mr. Bussey and Mr. Whealey have done an amazing amount of compilation. This book is a much needed springboard into further research.
There are two things that would make a wonderful improvement (in my amateur opinion):
Create an Index. The volumes are organized by varietal listings and pomological watercolors (with a few further explanations in the first volume and some usage lists and names in the last volume). An index volume would further categorize the apples by Place of Origin (State/Province, Town), Persons responsible, etc.
Digitize the book in a wiki format. This would allow users to bring new information to each entry (places where/if scion wood can still be found, GPS coordinates for the original nursery, photos, correspondence, additional resources, etc)
I understand the second one will not happen. An UNBELIEVABLE amount of time has been spent in research and compilation. I don’t mean to insult anyone working on the project by putting something like this for free on the internet. I simply believe that the incredible effort could gain exponential traction with some crowdsourcing.
I love the books. It will hold a prominent place on my book shelves for many years to come. It is truly a gift. One, I believe, we could make it even better with a wiki–or at the least of solid index. Thank you Dan, Kent and others! You have blessed my life.
That is 31% off. I would say a pretty good deal for 7 volumes of a book. It is a discount from the Publisher so I am not sure actually if that is normal or not. I have really wanted to buy this series though.
Plans for a future update of the 7 volumes will include place of origin and much more historical information. It’s coming along very well and I’ll update this post as it happens.
Dan
Hey Andy,
The publisher is ‘unofficially’ keeping the lower price for the foreseeable future. It was initially priced to be comparable to finding a used set of the Apples of New York series. In fact, I have copied these books into it so there’s no need to find them as they’re getting pretty scarce.
It may be a few years until the new edition comes out. I have thousands of notes to type in and a lot of new material to include. I’m also collecting images of apples from pomological publications to illustrate more varieties than were included in the book. My editor left out 152 of these paintings to provide ‘balance’ to each volume. These will be included.
Thanks!
I have both volumes of Apples of New York, but when I want to look something up, I almost always search online. I mostly go to Google Books (Volume I and Volume II), but it is also available through the Internet Archive (Volume I and Volume II,), Biodiversity Heritage Library, and the Hathi Trust.
I was present on that joyous day when a friend opened up his copy of the History of Apples set, but I haven’t yet had the opportunity look at more than a few apple entries. The Rambo, which few get right, was handled pretty well.
I decided to buy myself a present. The set arrived a few days ago, but I haven’t taken them out of the box. Maybe I’ll wait until Boxing Day. I’ll have all winter to peruse them, after all.
