(EXPANDED FROM 12/15/2022) James A. Ward’s Packard book, The Fall of the Packard Motor Car Company, is dwarfed by Automobile Quarterly’s epic tome edited by Beverly Rae Kimes (2002) as well as Stuart R. Blond’s […]
(UPDATED FROM 2/19/2021) Histories written by practicing automotive journalists are usually engaging reads with lots of behind-the-scenes anecdotes. However, they can also be analytically superficial and grounded more in access than accountability journalism. In other […]
Stuart R. Blond’s biography of Packard head James Nance is among the most unusual books in my automotive library. For one thing, Spellbinder: The Life of James J. Nance, is a two-volume set that stretches […]
(EXPANDED FROM 4/10/2020) If Dodge: 100 Years represents the future of automotive history, then we’re in real trouble. What we have here is a lavish display of mindless car porn and marketing babble. That’s an […]
(UPDATED FROM 10/16/2020) Charles K. Hyde’s history of American Motors and its constituent companies is a valuable scholarly addition to the literature. His book, Storied Independent Automakers: Nash, Hudson and American Motors, offers considerably more […]
(EXPANDED FROM 11/13/2020) Thomas E. Bonsall wrote one of the better Studebaker histories, but it suffers from flaws that undercut the book’s usefulness. More Than They Promised, which was published in 2000, is a refreshing […]
(EXPANDED FROM 1/4/2014) American Motors Corporation: The Rise and Fall of America’s Last Independent, is an update of sorts for a book Patrick Foster published 20 years earlier. However, Foster’s newer book includes quite a […]
(EXPANDED FROM 6/26/2020) Disaster in Dearborn: The Story of the Edsel is paradoxical. On the one hand, this is a serious history book — unlike so many of the coffee-table decorations that populate the big-box […]
I only needed to quickly doublecheck a fact when I recently reached for Richard Langworth’s book, Kaiser-Frazer: The Last Onslaught on Detroit. A few hours later I finally pulled myself away from it. The book […]
Patrick R. Foster’s Hudson Automobiles: An Illustrated History lives up to its title. If you are mainly interested in pictures, this is your book. The 128-page paperback is dominated by photographs, artist sketches and advertising, […]
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