Published in full on the American Botanical Council website.
ABC Announces Recipients of James A. Duke Excellence in Botanical Literature Award
The nonprofit American Botanical Council (ABC) is pleased to announce this year’s James A. Duke Excellence in Botanical Literature Award recipients. The reference and technical book recipient is Medicinal Plants and the Legacy of Richard E. Schultes co-edited by Rainer W. Bussmann, PhD, and Bruce E. Ponman; the recipient in the popular and consumer books category is Smoke Signals: A Social History of Marijuana—Medical, Recreational, and Scientific by Martin A. Lee.
The ABC James A. Duke Excellence in Botanical Literature Award was created in 2006 in honor of noted economic botanist and author, James A. Duke, PhD. It is given annually to books that provide a significant contribution to literature in the fields of botany, taxonomy, ethnobotany, phytomedicine, or other disciplines related to the vast field of medicinal plants. Among his long and prestigious career achievements in economic botany and ethnobotany at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Dr. Duke has authored more than 30 reference and consumer books. He is also a co-founding member of ABC’s Board of Trustees and currently serves as Director Emeritus.
In 2011, due to the diversity of quality books related to medicinal plants, ABC created two distinct categories for the James A. Duke Award. The recipient of the popular and consumer books category award was Healing Spices: How to Use 50 Everyday and Exotic Spices to Boost Health and Beat Disease by Bharat B. Aggarwal, PhD, and Debora Yost (Sterling Publishing, 2011). The same year, the American Herbal Pharmacopoeia’s Botanical Pharmacognosy: Microscopic Characterization of Botanical Medicines (CRC Press) received the reference and technical books category award.
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