The Book of Bamboo

by David Farrelly

Book Overview

Bamboo's amazing versatility, strength, and beauty have given it a larger role in human culture than any other plant. Both sustainable and plentiful, it has been used for millennia to make objects... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 087156825X
• ISBN13: 9780871568250
• Release Date: September 1984
• Publisher: Sierra Club Books
• Length: 332 Pages
• Weight: 2.37 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 8.2" x 10.9"

Customer Reviews

All about the other grass

This is a comprehensive treatise written with passion, and reminds me of "The Whole Earth Catalog" of the '60's, Mother Earth News, and various underground comics. Done in the best tradition of the good ole days. If you find info that is not in this book, you can write it on a sticky note and attach it to an inside cover.

terrific overview

I bought this for information on growing, fertilizing, diseases and such about the bamboo I already have, but quickly found that there is so much more, almost an extended poem on bamboo, history, legends, uses, etc. A marvelous reference for all lovers of bamboo.

Great Beginning

In a World in which only three countries have doubled their forest resources while the rest of the nations are working on depleting theirs; a global crisis waiting to happen because of our irresponsible handling of our natural resources, bamboo offers a solution that could definately take us back to a healthy equilibrium. This book gives a glance of its many uses and benefits. Anybody interested in life has got to take a dive into this amazing research. This book is literally, "the top of the iceberg."

The most comprehensive book on bamboo..........

Written by the one of the few people in the world qualified to produce a monograph on bamboo, it is as comprehensive as it gets. David Farrelly has spent more than a decade planting, harvesting, and building with bamboo in Mexico, Nicaragua, and the United States. If you are only interested in the growing of bamboo as an ornamental, then this book may not be exactly what you expect, but it still serves up more information on bamboo growing, propagation and care, and bamboo species and description then any other currently available books on bamboo. Don't expect grossy pictures either, but line drawings and old black and white photographs somehow seems to fit well in this book. Grossy pictures would have been out of place here. What really makes this book a must read is the other non-botanical, non-horticultural information on bamboo that the book includes - it's history, it's multiple of uses, it's interaction with mankind through the ages.If you are into bamboo beyond it's aesthietics, this is a "must read". If you are only into ornamental bamboos, this is still a good reference, and reading it will change your respect for what must be truly the most useful of all plants on planet earth.

Read this book first if you are new to bamboo!

This was the first book I read about bamboo many years ago when I first started planting bamboo. I guess the best way to describe it would be to call it "The Last Whole Earth Catalog of Bamboo". It covers all aspects of bamboo, facts and fiction, reality and myth. This book is for the true lover of bamboo.