This guidebook to contemporary fine paper is aimed at artists, designers, and crafts people. With her "head full of paper," Turner enthusiastically tackles the world's production of all fine papers, organizing them by method of manufacture and geographic region. She parenthetically touches on the making, buying, storing, and use of old and new papers, as well as the repairing and framing of paper-borne art. This is a lot of territory to cover, but Turner has written on these topics in three previous books: Handmade Paper Today (with Birgit Ski�ld,1983), Which Paper? (1991), and A Hand Papermaker's Sourcebook (with Sophie Dawson, 1995).   The body of this book surveys high quality papers throughout the world without prejudice about the method of their manufacture. Turner focuses on mills that have sufficient production that their papers are widely available. She has acquired information from the manufacturers about each of the sheets, and passes on specifications on the sheets, notes on their manufacture, and a line drawing of watermarks, if present. This portion of the book seems complete and very helpful for a variety of readers. For those who are not fortunate enough to live near one of the great paper emporiums, the lists release the individual purchaser of paper from the practical limits imposed when using a single distributor or local art supply store. Also, since some of this information is typically proprietary and ephemeral, it will be invaluable to future scholars as they try to care for and understand art on paper being made now.   The book is easy to use: if one wants to choose a watercolor paper, for instance, one turns to the section "Papers for watercolour". There one finds a discussion of the properties of watercolor paper, by a representative of St. Cuthberts Mill in England (re-printed from Which Paper?), followed by a listing of fifty-eight separate sheets that are described by their manufacturers as suitable for this medium. One can refer to the annotated sections on each sheet to find interesting papers by using the detailed index Papers are identified in this way for a wide range of printmaking and autographic techniques, as well as for book making, computer-generated graphics, and photographs. An appendix listing the addresses and telephone numbers of manufacturers and distributors of the sheets, as well as other individuals and institutions Turner consulted, are particularly valuable for those who want to track down the papers. (unfortunately but unavoidably, some of the addresses and phone numbers are already out of date.)   The Book of Fine Paper is inviting. It is printed in a warm black ink on a creamy, slightly textured, moderately thick paper. A folio bearing eighteen samples of identified papers is included inside the front cover. The book is illustrated with black-and-white photographs of papermaking history and technology, with many color photographs illustrating the various papers under scrutiny. The color photographs of sheets are not as useful as samples, but do keep the cost of the book down. The margins of the book are generous, leaving room for readers to make their own notations on the text.   Since the book is handsome and easy to use, it is unfortunate that the information included is uneven. Thames and Hudson has a good reputation as a scholarly press, so some deficiencies found in the book come as a surprise. These include inaccurate or misleading statements, the absence of both footnotes and a bibliography, and incomplete crediting of sources (including reprinted material from the author's own, earlier volumes). Each instance of these faults may seem inconsequential, but I found so many of them that I finally became frustrated and disappointed.   On page 25, three problems can be identified that stand for similar lapses noted elsewhere in the text (outside the paper lists). Methyl cellulose is erroneously identified as a polyvinyl emulsion; it is a cellulose ether. On the same page, optical brighteners are referred to as "fluorescent bleaching agents." This language is muddling since a bleaching agent brightens a sheet by chemical action on the fiber, while an optical brightener alters the way the eye perceives the color of the sheet, without altering the fiber at all. This is a critical distinction, given the short and long term effects both residual bleach and optical brighteners have on paper. Finally, a quote in the margin next to the discussion of optical brighteners, added for the reader's interest, concerns the addition of blueing to paper fiber to increase brightness: "We have improved the manufactory by throwing blue into it, as people do, in washing, in linen." This quote is attributed to John Krill, from English Artists Papers, 1987 (no publisher given). In fact, John Krill was quoting James Whatman II, who was explaining his method for correcting the color of a white sheet during a forgery trial in 1770-71. The complete quote (as transcribed by Krill and found on page 92 of his work, published by Trefoil, London, in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name at the Victoria & Albert Museum) continues with, "The first of my doing that was in April 1765. This [the sheet he was describing to the jury] is very blue, so that I do not believe it has been made more than a twelvemonth. If you please to compare it with paper made seven or ten years ago, there is an amazing difference."   The presence of pervasive errors are inexplicable in this book since Turner's earlier books have covered some of the problematic topics very clearly. Here her discussion of dyes and pigments used in papermaking is very confusing. By contrast, her discussion of colorants for papermaking in A Hand Papermaker's Sourcebook is lucid and particularly germane to users' needs.    Turner has made great contributions to the promotion of contemporary paper. On this topic that she knows so well�the current production of fine papers and their use in art�Turner has given us a helpful tool. Despite its flaws, The Book of Fine Paper is worth keeping on the shelf near Silvie Turner's other publications.