Stewart Robert Hinsley
....
P van Rijckevorsel writes
Actually the bookseller's, but likely based on the publisher's

Where would I find it; Amazon (US, UK, DE) don't know about it.
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In this case Koeltz, it is supposed to appear in August / September 2003.
I like to keep up.
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I've just acquired Vol. 5 of The Families and Genera of Vascular Plants
(covering 2.5 orders). Already out of date, in that some published and
semi-published molecular data is not taken into account. I've been
thinking of writing a review, but firstly I would be at risk of
unintentionally condemning it with faint praise, and secondly I don't
have the knowledge to judge the contents, except for Malvaceae, and
perhaps some other bits of Malvales.

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Writing reviews is indeed fairly dangerous, but since this is a
well-established series there will be plenty of reviews of earlier volumes
to use as examples. Also readers pretty much know what to expect.
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the curious way they are handling names. The one moment they claim
completeness, the other they are omitting illegimate and even descriptive
names. Perhaps they spent so much time writing that it now is badly out of
date?
PvR

I think that it is better described as a syllabus of families of
organisms subject to the rules of the ICBN.

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The ICBN is a set of rules of nomenclature and will fit just about any
classification
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(Which might be roughly
coincident with photosynthetic and saprophytic organisms.) With the way
the plant/animal dichotomy was forced onto fungi, protists and bacteria
this is a heterogenous collection. It sounds as if the top level of
their classification is badly distorted by forcing it into the
traditional dichotomy, but there's no reason to believe that the data
from kingdom on down is wrong. Then again, it might just be the blurb
that's broken; in fiction, at least, the inaccuracy of blurbs is
notorious.

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Too true. In fiction, of course, there also is the cover illustration which
can be amazingly ill-fitting the contents of the book
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I don't know what they mean by descriptive names. Perhaps they mean
names which aren't proper binomials. Or perhaps unranked taxa.
--
Stewart Robert Hinsley

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Normally "descriptive names" are names not derived from genera (such as
Magnoliophyta and Liliopsida) but describing a featu Rhodophyta,
Angiospermae, Dicotyledones, Gramineae, etc. Above the rank of family these
can be freely used.
PvR