Garden Eden: Masterpieces of Botanical Illustration

This survey of 483 fine color plates from outstanding works of botanical illustration from the 6th-20th centuries, paralleling a concurrent exhibit at the Austrian National Library in Vienna, indeed evokes the Garden of Eden. Lack (Free U. of Berlin), director of the Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin-Dahlem, provides a trilingual German-English-French essay “on the diversity of the plant kingdom” and introductions to the work of each illustrator. The non-German text rates a smaller font size. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)