Sid Mashburn An Illustrated Catalog Of American Fruits & Nuts

The title does a decent job of telling you what's up, but this beautiful hardcover edition is a “kaleidoscopic celebration of the USDA’s pomological collection, offering an engaging, biophilic meditation upon the sweetest of the earth’s produce.” That collection includes 7,497 botanical watercolor paintings of different fruit and nut varieties from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which were created by a team of 21 professional artists to aid the nation's fruit growers. Many of those watercolors are reproduced here alongside “fruit-suffused anecdotes and observations drawn from the fields of archaeology and anthropology, horticulture and literature, ancient representation and contemporary visual art.” Contributors include Adam Leith Gollner, Jacqueline Landy, John McPhee, Michael Pollan, and Marina Vitaglione.