4 comments about Classic Railroad Advertising: Riding the Rails Again.

1. What a beautiful book! Hardcover and full of the most deliciuous information. Mr. Burness has compiled, from his own collection of original railroad advertising a real time travel to explain us in the words of the railroads themselves (and some related industries-even Lionel), the evolution, successes and problems of American rail industry. The ads are sorted in alphabetical order by company name. From the 20's and 30's going through that heroic period of WW II and the postwar years and coming to Amtrak, you will witness the introduction of dome cars, the new trains like the California Zephyr, new technical achivements and so on. Reading this book you will feel the fallen flags so alive that is difficult to realize that most of them disappeared 30 or 40 years ago.

   And it is not only the trains. Reading these ads you will be back in time in the United States of yesterday. The problems, the people and their fashions, etc. You will really enjoy this book.




2. An interesting book of over two hundred passenger train ads that appeared in mass-market magazines. Each one fills a page with an informative caption. None of them would have won any design awards, mostly they follow the predictable format of illustration, headline, text and small pictures and as these are train ads, the little route map.

   However, within this predictable (and sucessful) format you will see some great artwork, page 17 shows a 1945 American Locomotives ad with a stunning painting of a railroad yard with five streamliners, pages 52-53 has two Leslie Ragan paintings for the Budd Company. The Shell ad on page 186 looks like it was straight out of something painted by Bruce McCall (it wasn't) and there are thirteen pages of great New York Central ads that all feature cut-away illustrations.

   As well as great art don't forget the copy. I'm pleased to see included the New Haven RR's 'The Kid In Upper 4' one of the most famous ads of the war years, read it and appreciate copywriting at its creative best. I never knew what the term 'highball' meant until I read the copy in the Pennsylvania RR ad on page 169-169.

   I would have given this book five stars but like so many pictorial books the publishers have not taken the presentation seriously enough. Here the none of the ads have a definable edge, they just float in the white space on each page, easily solved by running a very thin black line round the ads original size or better still use a grey vignette drop shadow behind them. The typography of the title, contents, index pages etc is very bland and unimaginative. There are five ads that run across spreads but they don't, each has a thick white margin either side of the middle of the book, doing this is as bad as not correcting typos.

   If you like railroad advertisments have a look at 'All-American Ads 40's' by Jim Heimann, a massive 764 page book that has (in color) thirty five of them in the chapter on travel.




3. This is a brand new, 2001 hardback 224 page library volume that will please every railroad and advertising fan. It features 224 pages with 212 outstanding color photos of train ads of every description. The photos look as good or better than the originals. This covers the period of 1920s through the 1950s. There is an emphasis on how the passengers in the postwar period enjoyed the delight of train travel. Plenlty of interesting text is provided. A delightful work.



4. This is a fascinating book for those interested in the transition era of railroading and the advertising that was created in this era. The book is a collection of nearly 200 classic print advertisment that appeared in magazines during the 1940's, 50's and 60's. The ads range from railroad specific ads, with extensive coverage of the Union Pacific, Pennsylvania, New York Central and Great Northern railroads. Most other major railroads are represented with some pages in the book. In addition to railraod specific ads, this book has lots of ads from the manaufacturers of railroad equipmemt, including EMD and Pullman, along with others.
   If you are interested in railroad art, or are interested in the transition era of the railroads, this is a book for you. This book is a quality publication and the reproduction effort is quite good. This book is a welcome part of my library and covers a neglected area of railroad history.

No comments about Catalogue of the Coins of Parthia.

No comments about Mary Paxson: Her Book: 1880-1884.

No comments about Only in Los Angeles.

3 comments about Winnie the Pooh Collectibles II: Identification & Price Guide.

1. This book is a great reference for anyone who enjoys collecting pooh. I recommend it to any collector. The only complaint I would have is that: there are two books, "Winnie the Pooh Collectibles" and "Winnie the Pooh Collectibles II". I do not think this site did a very good job of distinguishing between the two. I am looking to buy the first book.



2. This book is a must have for the avid Winnie the Pooh collector. Pages 8-47 are just on stuffed characters. It starts with very early plush characters and continues onward with newer ones. The next section, entitled "Ceramic Pooh and Friends", encompasses a variety of things. For example, cups, banks, plates, bookends, cookie jars, snow globes, musicals, picture frames, and figurines. This section also has platic figurines and Christmas Winnie the Pooh items.

   There are pictures of each item along with a description underneath or beside it. The excerpts below each picture tell who or where the item was made, the year it was released, a detailed description, and how much each item is worth.

   Overall, this book is very useful and easy to use. It is very helpful in showing how much an item is worth. Any Winnie the Pooh fan will enjoy this in their collection.




3. This is a great book. It lists many of the more common items and their prices so that you can actually see the value of items that you (may) own! Wonderful photographs and detailed information about the items.

2 comments about The Vintage House Book: Classic American Homes 1880-1980.

1. I love Tad Burness' Car Spotters Guide book and I highly recommend them to anyone into American automobile company design and history. So when I found this book I thought "great!".
   
   When I received the book, I found it not so great.
   
   One of the problems that this book has is that unlike the Car Spotters series, there is a different pool from which to glean examples when you are dealing with architecture, and unfortunatly, this book missed the mark more than hits it.
   
   This book struggles with what it is as it is neither a reliable reference book, nor is it a spotters guide. This book is sorta like a visual lexicon or a timeline history, executed at a high level (not much detail).
   
   The immediate shortcoming that hit me was the lack of accurate information on architecture - the author seems to coin his own terms instead of using accurate terms to describe many house style examples. I was also bored having discovered that many of the examples in the victorian section of the book - the period with the greatest types of styles - focuses almost completly on western American buildings, and of the examples there is an over reliance with the community where the author lives.
   
   Now if you are looking for visual histry on toliets, this book nails that fact and nails it very well.
   
   One error that I found was an image of a house allegedly in Carey Ohio - in fact the house was in Bucyrus Ohio (I only know this because a great uncle built it).
   
   I also found the image quality a problem because of the DPI issue between today's printing technology and the ads sampled in the book. In some cases the image is obscured by the minimal dots per inch and the clarity of modern printing.
   
   My advice is , this is a good book if you don't know very much about historical architecture and you're just curious. This is not an accurate reference book. If you are going to buy this, don't expect much, and buy it used.



2. An amazing resource book if you are interested in the American home from 1880. Tad Burness started in the sixties collecting illustrations, photos and ads of anything to do with domestic housing and this book is the result of his endeavours. You need to know though that the book is essentially visual and 2500 images are shown in a scrapbook format, with many of them irregular shapes, where a house, for instance, has been cut out from its background,
   
   Each crammed page has between nine to fourteen pictures (plenty in color) which could include six or seven exterior house photos or illustrations, possibly taken from period ads, three or four interiors (also from period ads) mostly kitchens and bathrooms, maybe a floor plan or some period ads for a heating system, door handles or property. Many of these items have a few handwritten words from the author. I rather liked these very busy, crammed pages but I could see that they might not be to everybody's taste.
   
   This large paperback is a fascinating overview of a hundred years of American housing but if you want to see pictorial books with a more formal presentation have a look at these: 'Houses by Mail', by Katherine Stevenson and Ward Jandl, a picture and floor plan of the hundreds of styles sold by Sears Roebuck from 1908 to 1940. For domestic interiors of the fifties and sixties check out two books by Eugene Moore: Inspiring Interiors from Armstrong 1950s and Interior Solutions from Armstrong the 1960s both use several hundred room set photos taken from Armstrong flooring ads. For a really comprehensive study of past decades the Decorative Art series by Charlotte and Peter Fiell published by Taschen can't be beat.
   
   ***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

No comments about Spanish New Mexico: The Spanish Colonial Arts Society Collection.

1 comments about Everything Harley-Davidson: A Century of Memorabilia.

1. This book is one of the best written for the Harley Davidson Collector. Well written and illistrated. Highly recommend.

No comments about Miller's: Buying Affordable Art (Mitchell Beazley Antiques & Collectables).

No comments about Breaking Hard Ground: Stories of the Minnesota Farm Advocates.