Book excerpt: In Roman mythology, fruit was believed to be a gift from the goddess Pomona, and the study of fruit culture is therefore called pomology. Pomona's Harvest is an illustrated in-depth review, never attempted before, of the European literature dealing with fruit from antiquity to the Industrial Revolution. Frederic Janson draws readers into this arcane yet fascinating subject by placing it against the background of history, showing the connections among pomology, social history, and the history of ideas. Janson divides the first part of Pomona's Harvest into specific periods: antiquity and the Middle Ages; orchardist authors to Louis XIV; the Jeffersonian literary approach to fruit; Enlightenment and Revolution; fruit books for the bourgeoisie; and more. Noblemen, clerics, estate gardeners, lawyers, scholars, and poets render their individual pomological theories. The second part of the book is a detailed bibliography that describes over 600 fruit-related works and critically abstracts their contents. An 8-page color spread and 139 black-and-white illustrations delightfully augment the text, each one telling a story about the nature of the period.