Reviews Update!

Here at David R. Godine, Publisher, we strive to produce high quality books above all else. So, when our books and authors are praised, we hope you'll forgive us for acting like proud parents. Please join us in celebrating the recent success of a few of our talented authors.

Verey's famous laburnum walk at Barnsley House in Gloucestershire, England

Nov 29 - We're twice as excited to hear that the popular gardening blog The Garden Interior included not one but two Godine titles in their annual Top Ten Garden Books for 2013!

First is Rosemary Verey: The Life and Lessons of a Legendary Gardener, by Barbara Paul Robinson. Here are some highlights:

A charming biography of one of the 20^th Century’s great gardeners, and it is told in Robinson’s engagingly simple, straight-forward prose narrative. [Verey] was relentlessly self-promoting, brilliantly opinionated, tremendously well read, very high-spirited and an arrestingly charismatic speaker.  At a time when garden design seemed moribund, she revived it with a breath of fresh air. 

And second is Writing the Garden, by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers:

"This volume... has rightly won the prestigious American Horticultural Society Book Award.  It fluently but never frivolously discusses the garden writing of more than three dozen great writers, sampling their work and presenting it in a superbly enlightening context. On the whole this is a balanced and very well curated collection of some of the world’s finest garden writing. "

Read the full post with all top ten gardening books here.

~~~

"Preachers": Johnny Crabtree and Jim Ed Whitt, both coal miners, preach inside their small church in Sprigg, Mingo County, 1970.

In further news, photographer Builder Levy's newest collection, Appalachia USA, was recently reviewed in the Charleston Gazette:

Appalachia USA is filled with engaging photographs of children living in coal camp houses, many happy and some rather sad. Some play with friends, ride bicycles or feed their dolls. Others just stand inside their homes. 

Country music legend Kathy Mattea, a native West Virginian herself, said, "These pictures took my breath away the first time I saw them. There's a fierceness and a reverence juxtaposed in these images. They capture the spirit of a place, a time, a way of life."

Read the full article here. For more information on Builder Levy, visit his website.

And remember, both of these titles are available directly from www.godine.com!