The Hostapedia: An Encyclopedia of Hostas Hardcover – January 1, 2009

With so much information about Hostas available on the internet for free, why spend $80 for a book? The value in this book, aside from its obvious coffee table display virtues, is the author's expert curation, validation, and standardization of information.This large (9"x12"x2.5"), nearly 1200-page hard-cover encyclopedia quite literally weighs in at 10 lbs. The ~40 pages of introductory material is well-written, informative, brief, and worth familiarizing oneself with before diving into the rest of the Hostapedia. At the back end, the bibliography is quite thorough for a publication intended for laypersons (not scholars and scientists), and the separate index of Hosta names alone spans 50 pages (3 columns per page). Heck, there's even a whole page of (~50) referenced Hosta-related websites. I believe that this book was self-published, and the careful attention to all of these details, not to mention the production costs for quality color printing on glossy stock and quality hard-cover binding more than justify the $80 selling price. And I haven't even gotten to the 1012-page encyclopedic middle part.By far the largest part of the Hostapedia is its alphabetically-ordered Hosta listings. Each entry includes the Hosta name, origin, history, description (identifying attributes), status (registration and/or availability), author's comments (these are often very illuminating), and where applicable, similar types (useful for cross-referencing, particularly for those without photos), significant sports, and significant seedlings. A photograph is provided for cultivars that are in some way significant or interesting (approximately one out of 4 or 5 descriptions). With something like 7,400 Hosta cultivars listed, no single-volume printed book could possibly include a photograph of each, but a typical page contains 2-3 full-colour photos, most of which were taken by the author himself.Much of this information you can readily find on the internet. What the internet does not and cannot provide, but this book does, is a curated, thorough, systematic, and consistent presentation. The author has studied, photographed, measured, validated, cross-checked, researched, compiled, sifted, sorted, collated, annotated, and illuminated the Hosta information in this book with a lifetime's worth of collected data, knowledge, and experience.With this book as a core reference, the internet becomes a useful tool for finding photographs of those cultivars that did not get a photo, or to research new cultivars that have been introduced after the book was published.I ordered directly from the author (via Amazon Marketplace) and the care and attention to the shipping/packaging surpassed expectations.Over the years, I've ordered many things online that were barely worth the price of the shipping. This has been a purchase with which I am deeply satisfied, and I know I will continue to enjoy it for years to come.

An indispensable encyclopedia for the hosta enthusiast. The book opens with practical and technical information about hosta. The bulk of the text consists of detailed profiles of thousands of hosta all based on author Mark Zilis’s own experience with the variety in question. Zilis’s expertise lives throughout the book. Profiles are supplemented with stunning color photographs. Coming in at more than 10 lbs and 1100 pages, this is a book to browse and consult for a lifetime. Love it.

I bought this for a gift for a friend. She loves collecting different hostess for her yard and talked about how amazing this book is. She was very happy with it.

This book is a massive book describing a lot of Hostas of all types. I was hoping it would have more detail on raising them and have pictures of each type but it's still interesting.

very informative

Not all entries have photos, and with so many new cultivars coming out, it is already missing a lot. I wish there were indexes by color, and by size, too. But still a good reference, and I’m glad I got it.

For many years I used Mark Zilis's first book "The Hosta Hand book". Hostapedia is 100 times heavier and has 100 times more info. Great reference on the genus Hosta.

An amazing reference. An entire library in itself.

Excellent book, over 7 thousand varieties. My only moan is that not all descriptions have photos, so I have to second guess the names of some of my hostas against the descriptions.