Book Nook: Guide to medicinal herbs

Cover of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC GUIDE TO MEDICINAL HERBS: The World's... — Cover of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC GUIDE TO MEDICINAL HERBS: The World's Most Effective Healing Plants, by Rebecca L. Johnson, Steven Foster, Tieraona Low Dog, MD, and David Kiefer, MD. National Geographic Books, 383 pp., $40. Credit: Handout

By PEGGY BROWNpeggy.brown@newsday.comJune 18, 2012

Introducing this book, white-bearded "integrative" physician Dr. Andrew Weil writes that he recommends medicinal plants to patients "more frequently than I prescribe pharmaceutical drugs." But, he cautions, beware of misinformation.

Hence, this National Geographic guide, which lives up to the brand's reputation for thoroughness and beauty. Four experts -- including Low Dog, an appointee to the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine -- give reader-friendly overviews, including botany and history, uses -- and sometimes warnings.

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