Review by Choice Review
Braund, a historian, undertook the project of recreating Romans's treatise as a facsimile edition. The result is a modernized work, retaining all of the historical, biological, and social observations of the original but in modern prose. Braund uses the first 75 pages to make interpretive comments on the original work before presenting the work itself, with 77 pages of carefully referenced notes following. Romans's work encompasses observations on geology, flora and fauna, and native cultures of Florida in the 18th century. He, William Bartram, and James Adair are considered the foremost chroniclers of those subjects in the southeastern US of the time. Although the descriptions of plants, animals, and physical landscapes are interesting, of even greater fascination is Romans's description of the life of the Choctaws and other tribes, their uses of medicinal plants, and the subordinate status to which they were assigned by white Europeans. Students of history, ecology, and anthropology will appreciate this book for the insight it provides into the perceptions of a learned individual caught up in the development of a young nation. It should be in undergraduate libraries supporting the biological and social sciences. General readers; undergraduates; faculty. H. N. Cunningham Jr.; emeritus, Pennsylvania State University, Behrend College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
