Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.” ― A Dance with Dragons
You’ve got questions about books? I’ve got some answers.
- Q: Why haven’t you written any new books?—Bobbie, St Augustine, FL
- A: The short answer is nobody asked me. In the recent past, a publisher asked me to write a book about black and white digital photography—I had already written Creative Digital Monochrome Effects—but the deal never closed. The publisher of my last four books discussed my writing a book about shooting with Micro Four-thirds mirrorless cameras but before we could sign a contract, they shut down their book division to focus on video production. As I’ve said before, these days a publisher only wants authors with hundred of thousands of social media followers to help sell the books because the publisher doesn’t want to.
My TBR LIst
Right now I’m reading Karla’s Choice by a new novel set in the world of John le Carré’s iconic spy, George Smiley. Now I know what you might be thinking: How could anybody even think about writing a book like this? As it turns out, le Carré’s real name is David John Moore Cornwell and
Book Review: Precipice
I became a fan of Robert Harris after being mesmerized by his remarkable historical novel , about the manhunt following the assassination of King Charles I.
I was expecting a lot from Precipice. It’s about the events leading up to and the beginning of World War I and England’s involvement. It’s all viewed through the prism of an elicit affair between Prime Minister H. H. Asquith and a wealthy socialite, Venetia Stanley who was more than half his age. Instead of a political thriller what I got was a remarkable bit if scholarship including the content of the actual letters Asquith wrote to Stanley—sometimes three a day.—that turned the book into, what for me, was a bad soap opera.
The book includes an inside look at the politics of the war including the disastrous assault on the Gallipoli peninsula. This was a costly campaign that the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, promised would a naval only battle. At the end there were 187,959 causalities, including 120,246 from the United Kingdom. Movie fans might want to pick up a copy of Peter Weir’s outstanding 1981 Australian film Gallipoli about the battle. As disastrous as this battle was, the political drama behind the scenes sounds like the kind of squabbling you would hear at a covenant-controlled community’s HOA meeting. These shenanigans pale at the Prime Minsters love sick mooning over his mistress. Harris is an amazing writer but over and over again we are treated to the sophomoric ravings of a distinguished person, who should have known better, much like Gallipoli itself. If anything it puts the recent revolving door for UK Prime Ministers into perspective. As far as the book is concerned, I have mixed feelings; I liked the history, hated the love letters.
The Complete Book of AMC Cars: Let’s Ramble
The story of American Motors,
In chapter one, you’ll lean how American Motors was an American automobile manufacturer formed in 1954 by a merger between Nash-Kelvinator—yup they made refrigerators— and Hudson Motor Car Company. Here are two legendary car companies, Nash who produced the remarkable Nash Heally and the remarkably cute Nash Metropolitan, along with Hudson who created the Hudson Hornet, a famous race car successfully campaigned in NASCAR during the early1950s. They invited Packard to join the party, but that company hesitated, later merging with Studebaker with disastrous results, not that the AMC story itself has a happy ending.
The book’s chapters are a chronological listing of each of the company’s eras featuring a detailed look at every model AMC produced during its all-too-short lifetime. The well-written text is enhanced by some of the highest quality contemporary photographs I’ve seen this year in a book about cars and is further enhanced by illustrations, ads and historical photographs that help tell the company’s life story. The one prevailing theme is that, not being a part of The Big Three, AMC didn’t have the financial wherewithal to introduce many new models but did the best they could and along the way produced some of the more iconic automobiles from a small car maker since SAAB who also struggled under similar restraints and sadly ended up the same way.
The book emphasizes that AMC was devoted to quality and even their most mundane models were built to standard that Ford and Chevrolet wished they could produce, This direction came from the top with leaders like George Romney, Roy Abernethy and Roy D. Chapin Jr. whose influence fill the cars and this book with inspiration. Under this leadership and the influence of chief stylist Dick Teague. AMC produced the Rambler. which changed America’s perception of small cars. the Marlin—love it or hate it—and the Javelin. AMC also produced the Gremlin—love it or hate it. The one thing that surprised me reading the text was how long the Gremlin was in production, up until its end in 1983 when it was being built in Mexico. There’s a whole lot more in these chapters, including the high performance red-white-and blue models and even a chapter on AMC’s racing heritage, which was more than just the Trans AM racing it did with the Javelin.
The book is produced to a high standard with superb reproduction of the historical and contemporary photographs. It also has the best looking as well as best produced dust jacket I’ve seen in years. It features the beautifully captured image of an AMC Javelin in the Penske Trans AM racing livery of red-white-and Sunoco Blue and is simply breathtaking. I watched this car race (and win) a Trans AM race in Watkins Glen in the early 1970’s.
In 1970 AMC acquired Jeep from Kaiser Jeep for $75 million and later Renault purchased a significant interest in 1979, which as Nissan has discovered is not such a good idea. The company was ultimately acquired by Chrysler in 1987, who bought AMC mostly for the Jeep division, which is only casually mentioned in a book that is totally focused on the company’s automobiles, not trucks and SUVs. PS, I owned an 1984 AMC Jeep Wagoneer and it’s one of the few cars in my life that I miss till this day.
- Publisher: Motorbooks
- Hardcover: 240 pages
- ISBN-10: 076038701X
- ISBN-13: 978-0760387016
- Dimensions: 9.65 x 1 x 11.35-inches
- Weight: 2.3 lbs
- Price: $40.41, Kindle is $37.99.