The Tool Book by William Bryant Logan
(Workman Publishing)

Review by JEREMIAH McNICHOLS

The visual exercise of The Tool Book – from the neatly-ruled, open white pages to the comforting, fatherly authority of the small-caps headings – reeks of escapism, a guilty pleasure that claims to revere gardening but actually keeps one from it, obsessing over tools that were meant to be dulled and resharpened but are hanging on hooks in the garden shed while you pore over them in the library. Ten varieties of hatchets and axes, ten kinds of pruning saws, 18 species of hand pruners suspended with Photoshopped shadows over a clean, white page like insects pinned in a museum case, jaws agape. Exotic tools of the Victorian conservatory and English cottage garden – solid zinc soil blockers, glass bell cloches – rub shoulders with hand weeders, hoes, picks and shovels.

Such books can be a kind of pornography for gardeners, a fetishization of static images and expectations that fill one's head with information but leave one's muscle memory starved. For a gardener confined to a body cast or a maximum-security prison, such books can be a lifeline, just as women who prefer the company of cats can while away the hours burning through romance novels, or men who fear women can subscribe to Hustler. There is nothing wrong with escapism, in the right context; but it becomes decadent when it turns those thirsting for an engaged activity into mere readers. Like eager home cooks bewildered by the ingredients and methods of a master chef's labyrinthine recipe, an overabundance of tools, or of the perceived need for them, can stunt a gardener's development and leave them with a Martha Stewart fantasy that reality, with its weeds and foul weather, cannot hope to match.

Thankfully, Logan is interested in more than the fetishization of the toolshed. The first evidence of this is that every image is paired with a description and measurements, such as:

1. MARVIN HEAD POLE PRUNER: A sturdy but lightweight Douglas fir pole is matched with carbon steel blades and aluminum sockets in the manufacture of this long-reach pole pruner. The pole may be used with a forged steel Marvin head lopper or a saw, depending on the task. The Marvin head attachment with an additional extension pole is featured here. The pulley assembly has nylon rollers and high spring tension. Cuts branches up to 1 1/4" in diameter. Pole reaches to 6' alone, to 12' with extension. WEIGHT: 2 LBS.

Which drops us in the lap of 2. FRUIT PICKER, an ingenious ring of tooth-like fingers maneuvered on a pole to pick "that tiptop, tastiest apple" and drop it in a little mesh bag.

Better still, Logan, a lifelong gardener and professional arborist, knows the rules that govern this universe of utilitarian beauty. Where a coffee-table catalog would leave us in the clutches of high-ticket exemplars to buy or gnash our teeth over, Logan explains, patiently and thoroughly, what makes tools good, from the finer points of design behind specialized tools to the materials and manufacturing methods that distinguish cheap tools that break backs from well-made, well-weighted tools that work with you and last ages. He is also adept at describing just how various tools are used, a great help to first-generation gardeners who lack an experienced ally and happen across corrections to their methods seemingly at random. It is these areas of the book that make The Tool Book memorable, and leave the reader feeling empowered with their own tool wisdom, rather than simply drawing up a shopping list. (Which begs the question: If our efforts with hand tools are so easily misdirected, why don't they come with a simple instructional card? If a four-inch cactus comes with instructions, however vague, why not a hoe?)

As a celebration of fine tools, Logan's lilting prose reminds us that even escapism can be an honorable aim. Imagining the moment when a gardener discovers a good hoe that truly works with them, for example, he gushes like a cherry cordial. "Whichever one it is, you'll find that you no longer have to remind yourself to put the file in your pocket so that you can touch up the hoe's edge every couple of hours," he writes. "You'll remember because you like the feel of filing its beveled edge sharp. In return, it will cut for you like a fine kitchen knife and encourage you to find a quick, steady rhythm that is more like stirring a pot than breaking rocks." Not all gardening can be like this, but if it weren't for moments like these, we wouldn't do it at all. (Jeremiah McNichols)

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