What Wood Is That: A Manual of Wood Identification with 40 Actual Wood Specimens

This book is very handy when identifying and working with foreign wood, but for domestic wood identification try the United State's Department of Agriculture's "The Encyclopedia of Wood." It's extremely in-depth and informative.

Gift for my husband. He just loves it. Very informative and helpful.

This is a very friendly and straightforward book. It starts with veneer samples (quite small, but big enough) of 40 woods and finishes with descriptions of the trees that yield these 40 woods.In between there is quite a bit of useful information on wood, and the history of woodworking. A pretty good introduction to wood for and woodworking. This book will be only modestly useful in identification, since it is limited to naked eye observations of those 40 woods.I browsed through the 1969 edition and it clearly is from another era (with the chainsaw just being introduced!). I can well imagine that those who equate woodworking with roaring high speed machines may find this quiet book not to their liking.

If your working on a project involving exotic woods, then this book should be added to your library. The REAL wood samples are great. The book also has very useful information about many types of wood. I find this book to be a handy reference tool and am glad to have added it to my collection.

This book is a gem. It contains actual samples of woods, it is beautifully designed, very informative. Even if you are not a woodworker, and only just an admirer of this endangered item, you will treasure it. A great gift for home or professional woodworker or cabinet maker, furniture and antiques enthusiast, museum curator, or the like.