Customer Reviews

Crown Firecoach History

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4 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you have realistic expectations and enjoy Crown Firecoach fire engines, this book will be a good addition to your library. The text is well written, though I must confess I bought it primarily for the pictures. No other book has as many pictures of Crowns (to my knowledge this is the only book devoted entirely to Crowns). Most of the pictures are front 3/4 shots of Static rigs rather than action photos(as it should be in an apparatus buff book) One niggling point, Most of the pictures were taken by amateur photographers, often several years ago, and sometimes it shows. If you're expecting glorious full color spreads like the glossy fire truck books, you'll be disappointed. That having been said, there are almost no BAD photos and I would gladly have paid more to get even more of these photos. The other downer is the organization of the book. The chapters often overlap or repeat material. If you're looking for that 1970 Crown you saw, you'll have to check a lot of places. Both of these are really minor complaints and the book is a very complete reference on Crown Firecoach fire engines. Crowns are a rare breed and there probably won't be another book devoted to them so I would recommend picking up this book while it is in print.

Written by Ed Hass (a highly experienced specialist historian of firefighting apparatus who has five books and more than 100 published articles to his credit), Crown Firecoach History is a unique, remarkable, informative study of a special line of fire engines first created in 1953. Black-and-white as well as gorgeous color photographs of these historical vehicles, enhance this in-depth history of their service fill this amazing and memorable high-quality hardbound book from beginning to end. Printed on glossy paper, Crown Firecoach History is a superb gift for fire engine enthusiasts and automotive history buffs.

This book on the great Crown fire rigs could have been a lot better. How:

- many of the photos are out of focus and are of poor quality
- the writing text has lots of factual errors
- there is a lot of puffery in the writing, and endless referrals to
S/Cal musters. Where are useful interviews with Crown users?
- missing are (available) cab and chassis photos
- where is the discussion of Hall Scott power
- vastly too much inane writing on the Crown ownership

Tell amazon.com that you would like them to order this book directly from the author and publisher. They don't seem to know that this book is still available directly from the author. But if you ask them to, I'm sure they will be happy to order the book from me, for you.

Thank you for doing business with amazon.com and for ordering my book.

:-)

Ed Hass, Elk Grove, CA