Economic Botany (PLANTS AND HUMAN WELFARE)

In 1992, when I was offered to revise the internationally known book, Economic Botany by Late Professor Albert F. Hill (1889-1977) of Harvard University, USA, I was on top-of-the-world for years together. I tried to do justice to this globally accepted book (published first in 1937 and revised by Hill in 1951), worked for four full years to revise it, and this all resulted in a new and up-to-date book on the subject in 1996. The revised version was widely accepted by Indian readers, as is evident from the fact that upto 2006, it was reprinted nine times, first in hardcover and then in six softcover reprints. Then the publishers decided not to reprint it any more, with the reasons best known to them, and informed me their decision in black and white. Since I had been teaching this botanical discipline to undergraduate and postgraduate students for more than forty years (from 1967 till my retirement in 2007), I decided to prepare the manuscript of a new book using my old material, knowledge and teaching experience of four decades, and this all resulted in the form of the present book, now titled as Plants and Human Welfare. I named it so because economic botany is included in the UG and PG syllabi of most of the Indian universities also under this new name.