This brisker life of the man Johanna Johnston chooses to call simply ""Fred"" differs in some particulars from Iris Noble's Frederick Law Olmstead (KR, 1974). One might be inclined to give Johnston's less dramatized account of Fred's childhood the benefit of the doubt, but Noble certainly left us with a much more vivid sense of his compulsive energy and of the philosophy and principles of landscape design he originated and practiced. Second choice.