Kenneth I Helphand is a professor of landscape architecture at the University of Oregon. He is the author of several previous books, and the former editor of Landscape Journal. A fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects, he is also an honorary member of the Israel Association of Landscape Architects.

"An incredible and deply moving history of the ways in which soldiers and civilians, often in the most grievous and immiserated circumstances, have created little pockets of horticultural hope throughout the twentieth century... The photographs alone are extraordinary, but the chronicles of imaginative resistance are almost beyond belief. (New Statesman)