If you thought the $65 price for SENDING FLOWERS TO AMERICA book was too high, you were not alone. So I am extremely happy that the directors of the Los Angeles Flower Market have lowered the retail price to $50 - INCLUDING tax for those in California.

It’s a pricey book no matter how you see it. The production costs were enormous, as you can imagine, for an almost 300-page, full color book with a year of research going back 150 years. But the book is a gem with dozens of human interest stories about the settling of the Los Angeles area, how early farmers began growing the flowers that came to be shipped to customers across the U.S. and more than 350 photos dating from 1885 to 2008, many of them full page florals and many historic images.

Does it sound like I’m crazy about this book? I’m not alone .. it’s gotten rave reviews and it was announced just yesterday that Sending Flowers to American is a NATIONAL FINALIST in the 2009 Eric Hoffer Book Awards. Yeah!

Anyway, if you haven’t bought your copy yet, if you love history, if you’re a SoCal resident, and/or if you like flowers, just do it now. See Amazon.com or visit www.flowermarkethistory.com .

And tell us what you think of it! Email peg@flowermarkethistory.com or send a note through the website.

Thanks!

This celebration of the floral industry in Southern California is beautifully put together, with hundreds of photos of both people and flowers … While clearly an uncritical look at the industry, this book preserves a time and micro-culture that would have otherwise been forgotten. - Reference & Research Book News, Spring 2009

While at first glance this would seem a specialty acquisition narrowed to California and horticultural collections alone, in reality Sending Flowers to America is about much more than documenting the los Angeles Flower Market. it surveys the entire structure and fostering of the American floral industry as a whole, using a focus on Southern California’s evolution as a microcosm of experience. This focus offers over 60 stories based on interviews with descendants of the European immigrant families who formed the early Los Angeles Flower Market, and comes packed with over 350 photos. A gorgeous cultural history, highly recommended especially for California collections as a ‘must’ examination of the evolution of an industry. - California Bookwatch and The Midwest Book Review, March 2009

I have had many happy hours reading and just looking at the Sending Flowers to America. It is a beautiful book. So much real history welded into the romance that was made in flowers. - Norma Yocum founded the Alhambra, California historical society and authored histories about the area.