(EXPANDED FROM 3/19/2021)
Auto history books get surprisingly little attention in the buff media. If a newly published book is mentioned at all, it tends to be done with a modestly rewritten press release. Analytically substantive reviews are virtually nonexistent among the commercial — and even most of the noncommercial — media outlets.
Why is this? Perhaps books are a dying breed in the Internet Age. Information on virtually any automotive topic is at your fingertips. Why bother buying a book when you can read some anonymous poster’s impassioned views on a free website or Facebook page?
Okay, that’s cynical, but I’m trying to make a point: I feel conflicted. On the one hand, auto history books would seem to need all the visibility they can get in order to sell in financially viable numbers. On the other hand, we can’t advance the field if there are few public ways to debate what does and doesn’t represent good analysis.
This is why Indie Auto publishes reviews with a critical edge even though they aren’t very popular. And why I appreciate other media outlets that do the same.
My sense is that the single best source for automotive book reviews are the publications of the Society of Automotive Historians. Another useful source is Speedreaders.info.
Making the world a smarter place with book reviews
This website promises to offer “authoritative reviews of transportation books and media.” However, as we will discuss in a bit, review quality can vary.
Almost a dozen people are listed as reviewers (go here for their bios). Content is apparently produced on a volunteer basis, although the writers retain ownership rights. Speedreaders invites readers to submit their own reviews in order to “help make the world a smarter place.”
Also see ‘Wheel spinning happens when car buffs and scholarly historians don’t collaborate’
The range of reviews on automotive-related books is admirably eclectic. This is not a U.S.-centric website — there are more reviews relating to British cars than American ones.
A handy “Archives by Category” toggle on the left side of the front page shows 178 reviews relating to American automobiles. A wide range of books are covered, including automaker histories, fiction, biographies, picture books and cultural topics.
Few reviews focus on postwar automaker histories
Indie Auto is most interested in postwar automaker histories. I found only a handful of reviews on that topic, but I did come across a number of promising books I had not read before, such as Robert R. Ebert’s Studebaker and Byers A. Burlingame (Jacobus, 2016) and Jack Mueller’s Built to Better the Best: The Kaiser-Frazer Corporation History (Advani, 2012).
Of the books I was familiar with, Bill Ingalls’s (2014) take on Patrick Foster’s 2013 American Motors book was sympathetic but spiced with a few criticisms on formatting and editing details. For example, Ingalls was quick to point out that Foster was a one-time AMC salesman who has taken “sides and in fact has an ax to grind against those responsible for the managerial mistakes that led to AMC’s demise.” Ingalls suggested that Foster’s friendships with various AMC staff made the book more informative. He didn’t discuss how that might impact who Foster does and doesn’t criticize (here’s my take).
Also see ‘The downside of auto historians writing about their friends’
Meanwhile, Helen V. Hutchings’s (2013) review of Robert E. Ebert’s Harold Churchill book hit on what I thought were the book’s best qualities. She didn’t offer much of a critique, which appears to be a pattern with her reviews. However, an unusual feature of this particular essay is that she included correspondence with the author that offered insight into his motivation for writing the book.
Hutchings’s (2022) review of Stuart Blond’s Spellbinder: The Life of James J. Nance was less successful. Part of the problem was that her essay was too short to do justice to a two-volume set of books totaling more than 520 pages. She also seemed to be more interested in sketching Nance’s life than reviewing the book. That included not addressing this self-published book’s shortcomings, such as Blond’s gingerness in fully and objectively addressing key historical controversies (go here for further discussion).
All hail smarter book reviews
The front page of the website says that three new book reviews are posted each week. That’s a meaningful amount of content for a volunteer-produced website.
Speedreaders is a valuable service, so I hope that it continues to find thoughtful reviewers. “Smarter” book reviews will hopefully lead to better auto history books . . . and maybe even better auto history websites.
Speedreaders.info | Facebook
- Free access
RE:SOURCES
- Advani, Sabu; 2012. “Built to Better the Best: The Kaiser-Frazer Corporation History.” Accessed March 14, 2021.
- Hutchings, Helen V.; 2013. “Harold E. Churchill and the Presidency of Studebaker-Packard, 1956–1961.” Speedreaders.info. Accessed March 14, 2021.
- ——; 2022. “Spellbinder: The Life of James J. Nance: Volume One, 1900-1954; Volume Two, 1955-1984.” Speedreaders.info. Accessed March 22, 2023.
- Ingalls, Bill; 2014. “American Motors Corporation: The Rise and Fall of America’s Last Independent Automaker.” Speedreaders.info. Accessed March 14, 2021.
- Jacobus, John L.; 2016. “Studebaker and Byers A. Burlingame: End of an Automotive Legacy.” Accessed March 14, 2021.
This review was originally posted on March 19, 2021 and expanded on April 21, 2023.
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