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The Ashley Book of Knots is also a beautifully hand-written book.

https://www.amazon.com/Ashley-Book-Knots-Clifford-W/dp/03850...

So I just did that search and the first hit is this; can you explain what I should be looking for?

https://www.amazon.com/Ashley-Book-Knots-Clifford-W/dp/03850...

⬐ garganzol

Look at seller names. Names like "SummitPark Prints" and "TheProductsHub" are very sketchy.

They scream they have printers and binders running producing dubious quality books from PDFs found on internet.

⬐ newnewpdro

While that isn't the one I recall looking at when I searched, which was over a year ago, there are multiple low-scoring comments stating that this is a low-quality reproduction of the original. Some speculate it's just being reprinted from the "bootleg" PDF based on what they've received.

> "Unfortunately, this printing is really poor quality. The cover color is off (has a pink hue to every color on the cover), the binding is lumpy, and the pages of the book are so thin the other side shows through. The publishers have obviously skimped on quality materials."

> "Although the book appeared to be new and the dust cover was new, the binding was loose and the paper it was printed on was substandard….my impression was this book was reprinted as in a bootleg copy or something similar. I rated it 2 stars because of the ease of returning the item."

Etc.

I actually ended up just finding the PDF online, I think it was on archive.org, and that's that.

The problem with Amazon is they just throw them all in the same coarse-grained bucket. If I click on "13 new from $53.88" under hardcover, there's just a list of prices with no photos of the actual book I'm buying from the various sources. They're NOT equal, only "new" and "hardcover", it's a total diceroll what you're going to get. If you were to buy every one of the new hardcovers sold there, they'd all be different. I'm sure they'd all be reproductions of the Ashley Book of Knots, but of varying quality.

The copyright is expired on this book, so the market is flooded with random repros of varying quality. And Amazon makes no effort to help the customer assess the provenance and quality of what they're actually getting.

As useful as sites like these are, there is still no substitute for the encyclopedic Ashley Book of Knots[1][2], which contains every knot under the sun and then some (up to the time it was written -- and, to be fair, quite a few knots have been invented since then, but it's still an impressive tome).

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ashley_Book_of_Knots

[2] - https://www.amazon.com/Ashley-Book-Knots-Clifford-W/dp/03850...

⬐ blacksmith_tb

I have mixed feelings about Ashley - there's no doubt it's a very cool book for its sweeping scope, but I would never recommend it as a guide for learning tie knots. There are many good choices from Budworth[1], Pawson[2], Toss[3] and more.

1: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1069046.The_Complete_Boo...

2: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/220058.Handbook_of_Knots

3: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1476184.Knots

⬐ LgWoodenBadger

FWIW, I agree. The Ashley Book of Knots is the only book I've ever returned to Amazon.

It's expensive for what amounts to a coffee-table book of old drawings and a history of many superfluous, duplicate, or decorative knots.

A lot of the information is outdated with respect to newer materials and/or the "knot" industry.

For anyone interested in knots and knot tying, the Ashley Book of Knots[1] is a wonderful book to have. I've spent many happy hours pouring over the knots and their descriptions in this book.

[1] - http://www.amazon.com/The-Ashley-Book-Knots-Clifford/dp/0385...

⬐ utoku

It is _the_ book on knots, although it does miss knots invented later in the 20th century, like the Zeppelin bend. I was amazed to learn that it was used as a reference book by mathematical topologists. They will refer to a bend in space as Ashley#1024 for example, since all the knots in the book are numbered in a referential fashion.