It would be a very difficult task indeed to create a book that really does a good job of treating edible wild plants from all of North America. The books that attempt to do so rely way too much on other written works (which have a lot of misinformation) and way too little on direct experience. Moreover, trying to cover a really broad range of plants means that the plants that are covered are treated rather superficially. Just like the best field guides are usually the field guides for a particular region (when these are available), the best wild food guides have a strong regional bias. My ONLY complaint about The Forager's Harvest is that the author does not spell out his region right up front, I had to infer it from the plants covered (he also mentions that he's based in northern Wisconsin somewhere in the intro). I happen to live in the upper midwest (northern Minnesota), and for that region, this is far and away the best wild edible plants reference I've ever seen.

Selection: He doesn't try to cover everything you might eat if you were desperate, he covers most of the plants you would want to eat because they taste good and have high nutritive value.

Harvesting: He covers where, when, and how to harvest in sufficient detail for each plant that you are unlikely to be put off by a bad experience.

Preparation: Details of preparation are critical. For example I've never seen in any book such detailed directions for HOW to get the starch out of a cattail rhizome.

Overall approach: He drives home the idea that real foraging is real work. You need to study, and you need to put in real time - but if you do so you can expect to have good quantities of excellent food.

All in all, a really outstanding book, unsurpassed for the region.

This book has great detailed information! It's been very useful to me when I've been out foraging.

We vacation in the Sierra Nevada every summer and I wanted to start learning about foraging in these beautiful forests. Unfortunately, information for this area is sorely lacking in this volume. I'm sure the Indians who inhabited this area found plenty of wonderful plants to eat. Fortunately for them, they did not have to rely on this book. I will have to look elsewhere for a resource on plants of the Sierra.

I can't add to the other reviewers' praises, but do want to add to the description of this fine book, because some readers have been disappointed that it doesn't apply to their region (e.g. west of the Rockies). It would have been helpful to find this in book's description, but since it isn't, I'll add it here. The author notes in his intro that this book should be useful to foragers everywhere, but particularly in these regions: GREAT LAKES, MIDWEST, NORTHEAST AND THE SOUTHERN PART OF EASTERN CANADA. Hope this helps future book-buying foragers, looking for guides best suited to their region.

While this book doesn't cover a huge variety of wild edidbles the text and pictures on the ones it does cover are very useful. It is obvious that the author has actually collected the plants he is writting about. It is great that he offers new information on many of the plants not just information copied from someone else. Lets hope he writes another book.

The information in this book is more complete and concise than any book I have seen. Thayer limits the number of plants covered so that we may become completely familiar with the many characteristics that differentiate each species.
Interested in foraging since I was a child, I was certain of only a few wild edibles that my dad taught me. I read Gibbon's, "Stalking the Wild Asparagus" years ago but was unable to identify plants with certainty (which is fairly important to me if I'm planning on eating it).
Reading Thayer's book only weeks ago I've found more than a dozen delicious goodies right around my house and felt 100% confident of what I had found. (You really have to try milkweed! Yum! Who'd 'a thunk it?). Tips for harvesting, preparing and cooking add to the wealth of information. I only wish I'd have purchased the book earlier in the spring as blossoming was pretty much over in my area, eliminating one identifying characteristic. But there's always next year.
I hope his next book is as good.

The Forager's Harvest is a beautiful book that delivers on the whole. While I would love to see a series of photos that illustrate the plant from sprout through death, that would be asking a lot, and I could not hope for anyone to provide that. As it is, compared to many such books which feature only line drawings and confusing photos, this is a very good book. He does not try to blow air up anyone's skirt, telling us that this or that plant will save the world, or even provide the perfect entree. It does, instead, try to provide a balanced clear-eyed portrait of the edible plants the author is familiar with and makes no bones about his own peccadilloes.

For those of us who would like to see more localized guides which deal with specific biomes, those books will have to wait. In the on-coming post-oil world, these identification skills will separate the living from the dead. I continue to search for the most biome specific books hoping that someone with this knowledge will share it. Perhaps they realize that the last thing the wild needs is any more foragers to strip the ground clean.

For the photos alone, I would recommend this. If you are expecting the super-detailed information needed to be expert, this book cannot be it. No book could be. The indigenous populations, who knew this information, we killed off either literally or culturally, and that info is likely not coming back except through trial and error much as it accumulated pre-agriculture.

So, ultimately, buy it. Just don't expect too much, and you will not be disappointed.

This book inspired me to try eating the milkweed that is growing all over my back yard. Following the sniff-touch to tongue - taste - chew - swallow - wait 5 hrs sequence, we determined ours was edible. We have so far cooked up several plates of milkweed stems. They taste like asparagus but milder.

The book goes into some level of depth with the plants it covers, enough to give you some level of confidence. For a more comprehensive book, see the Peterson Guide.

I have bought many books on foraging and this is the best one yet. I know it doesn't cover everything, but it covers the easy ones and in great detail. You'll be able to harvest all edible parts of the plant and cook or eat fresh and enjoy them. After all my foraging reading, this is the book you want especially if your like me and want to learn it all today.

I was interested in finding out what kind of plants were edible native to the Pacific Northwest area, where I live. Unfortunately there were very few edibles covered that grow in this area, which has some of the most awesome natural habitats around. Nothing on Red Huckelberries or Oregon Grape for example. Miners Lettuce? Forget it. Not a good guide if you're interested in foraging in the Pacific Northwest, didn't seem to be any indication of this bias in the Introduction or other clues contained therein... very disapointing.

I bought this volume based on the the remarks of the author of the lead review- a botanist by training. I'm very glad I did. Although I have a half-dozen other books on edible plants, this is far and away the best. For the beginner- or even the more experienced forager- there is simply no better volume on identifying edible plants. And as the author notes, many other volumes list plants that may be non-toxic, but are certainly unpalatable. This book concentrates on commonly found, readily identifiable, flavorful plants that can be found almost all across North America.

The author is unstinting in his criticism of books he finds useless or misleading, but similarly unstinting in his praise of those, like Euell Gibbons, he admires; he goes so far as to say that he doesn't include any real recipes beyond the most simple preparations as Gibbons does a far better job than he could do.

Strongly recommended for naturalists, gardeners, foragers, scout leaders, hunters, survivalists, and anyone who'd like to explore the wild garden growing around them.

This would be a 5-star book if I lived back East or in the South. This is great if you live in South Carolina, Florida or Oklahoma. Even the New England area. But a lot of these plants aren't found in the American Southwest or the Pacific Northwest. For example, knot weed is quite common in the Pacific Northwest from California all the way up to Canada and yet it's not covered in here. It was brought over from Europe where it had been cultivated as a forage for livestock. It is edible by humans but I couldn't find any mention of it. I also thought the author took some chances with things like milkweed. Just because a wild plant doesn't have short term side affects doesn't mean it isn't doing something to your body in the long term.

I have over a dozen wild edible books and this is, by far, the best that I've seen. It is written in a very user-friendly way. The novice lay person picking up this wild edible book for the first time would be able to confidently go out and collect any of the highlighted plants and have a high rate of success. I've met and talked with Sam at length and have taken an edibles workshop from him. I can vouch for the fact that he lives the life of a forager and knows intimately those plants that he talks about in this book. This book is not the definitive text on all wild edibles. Rather, it is a thorough look at select plants that he has personally tried, tested and experimented with numerous ways of preparing the foods to give you best possible success with that particular plant. I recommend this book to anyone interested in wild edibles - it has become my wild edible bible.

I have been interested in wild edible plants for years but it wasn't until i picked up a copy of Sam's book that i became and avid forager.
Subtle things that have to do with preperation of the plant, exactly what part of the plant, when to gather it specifically and how to correctly process wild food seems to remain mysteriously vacant from many wild food field guides out there today. Sam's book goes deep into the preperation aspect of the plants where other books come up short.

Granted, he doesn't cover a volumous number of species in this book. However, what he does cover is laid out in exaustive detail. When so many plant books seem to be a regurgitation of the same information over and over again, Forager's Harvest comes as a breath of fresh air.

The subjects on milkweed and cattail alone are worth the price for this fine book. It's obvious that Sam lives this stuff as it is evident by his meticulate records and passionate writing. I have found much of what is in this book to be true ( i haven't harvested all the plants in this book yet.)

I would totally recommend this book as "the book" to get if serious about harvesting wild plants. It may be helpful for beginer's to also get a good solid plant id guide like 'Newcombs Wildflower Guide' and 'Botany in a Day.'

This is a good first book for a beginner, the author is very knowledgeable. This guy lives in a cabin and he actually applies this stuff everyday so he practices what he preaches he doesn't just have head knowledge. He also warns of other such books that list poisonous plants as edible.

My kids and I have almost finished reading this whole book aloud because it is like a story in amazingly useful order. We have already eaten some of the foods and can't wait to walk the byways to find other plants Samuel Thayer describes. He is so complete and believable and does this for a gourmet taste -- not to eat stuff the tastes like bitter medicine!

The best of the wild-edibles field guides. If I could only have one on my bookshelf, this would be it.

This book offers an excellent introducion to the practice of wild plant harvesting. Not only are the plants discussed (in great detail), but the author includes many personal experiences and additional information (the first 75 pages - timing, storage, etc.) - including recomendations on further book resources. The descriptions of the two dozen or so plants are extensive. The book gives information on ID, range, harvesting, and preparation. I live in Washington State, though, and I have only found about 11 of the plant species readily available here (Choke Cherry, Wapato, Butternut(in urban settings), Black Locust, Cattail, Stinging Nettle, Serviceberry, Sumac (Staghorn), Linden (urban ornamental), Burdock, and Thistle). The book is still a wealth of inforomation and a very valuable resource.

I am a botanist and I'm in love with this book. Admittedly, it treats only a few dozen plants, but each is described in detail, with methods of distinguishing it in the field from similar species, harvesting, and preparing it. Numerous color photos are very useful. There are good general discussions of plant identification, harvesting, and preservation. The author complains about previous edible plant references, which exhaustively list hundreds of plants but give inadequate information on each, and frequently recycle information from previous literature, allowing misinformation to creep in (an undeniable problem). Thayer proposes that writers on edible plants should provide only information from their own experience or else specifically referenced information, a praiseworthy code of conduct and one that really makes this book shine. When he gives you detailed instructions for when and how to gather and prepare a plant, you know that he's actually done it himself and it worked. I like his standards for the plants as well: Food should taste good! If it doesn't taste good, he says, don't eat it! So, while other books provide long lists of "survival foods" that would gag a goat, Thayer discusses only the plants that he actually enjoys eating. He tells you what sort of quality to expect in the final products, and whether they will be worth the work you put into them. The only volume I can recall seeing of remotely similar quality was Steve Brill's book, which dealt with a different set of plants (emphasizing the common "weedy" species that Thayer is not particularly interested in), so if you already have Brill, you can buy this too. Otherwise, if you want to start learning to use edible wild plants, start with this volume.