Customer Reviews

Go The Greyhound Way: The Romance of the Road

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've always had a soft spot for Greyhound ever since the mid-sixties when I made a seventy-eight hour trip from San Francisco to New York in the same seat on the same Scenicruiser. Well, I left the driving to them and saw America close-up...and it was great! Since then I've acquired several books about the hound and Gabrick's book is probably better than most because it covers the whole history of the company in words and illustrations.

The format of the book makes it really an extended series of very long captions linked together. Virtually ever page has a picture which is keyed into the text in a rather inelegant style: (fig.23) for example and set in bold type, so all the pictures have Fig. and the number plus also a few words. If it had to be done this way the abbreviated Figure to Fig, in the text could have been dropped without any loss of comprehension, just use a bold number for image and text.

Gabrick covers the Greyhound story with heavy use of cuttings from city papers (who basically reprinted company PR material) plus trade and business magazines. He also digs up some fascinating details: in 1947 Greyhound established a resort on the Florida Keys or a picture of the sheet music to `Love on a Greyhound bus' from the movie `No leave, no love' (it was also a hit for the Campus Kids in 1946).

I thought the strength of the book and what would most likely appeal to readers are the illustrations, it's a virtual treasure trove of ads, photos and other graphics, some of these, especially the various designer bus renderings, must be quite rare. It is here though that the book shows its weakness because all this wonderful material is handled in a rather amateurish way. As is so typical of books from the transport press images are repeated just because the editors gave the designer four copies of the same photo (for example) and instead of using the best one they all get used. Two columns per page provides a very unflexible format as well. On pages 124, 125 and 127 there are three separate shots of the same 1949 Scenicruiser all half-page across photos, one really big would have done. Page 39 has two, virtually the same, shots of the back of a Mack Greyhound from the twenties. There are plenty of Silversides in photos but so many are really too small to be useful. Pages 53 and 78 have fascinating cutaways of buses with arrows and captions and amazingly they are thrown away at one column width. Page 123 has a Post House menu which is small and totally unreadable.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing though are the ads. There are eighty-six of these wonderful company puffs from consumer magazines of the time, full of color bus illustrations, travel photos, maps and the over-the-top copy (which is frequently repeated by the author) but they are totally wasted because of small reproduction, except for six, so none of the copy can be read and this also applies to an interesting brochure from the thirties with thirteen unreadable pages reproduced on pages 32,33 and 34. It's as if this material was just used to fill holes on the page! Actually I would have bought a book just of these ads and the other Greyhound graphics if they were shown in a readable size.

There eight spreads with a visual history of Greyhound Terminals and depots and Iconographix have a rather good book just of these buildings: Greyhound in Postcards: Buses, Depots, and Post Houses. Well worth searching out if you're interested in architect Bill Arrasmith's wonderful streamline terminals.

If only the picture selection had been more rigorous so that the great ads, rare photos and graphics could have been displayed in a creative way this book would have been fascinating (and an index would have useful, too). Unfortunately it comes across to me as another bland title from the transport press.

***SEE SOME INSIDE PAGES by clicking 'customer images' under the cover.

I had just read Greyhound by Steffan Piper when I stumbled across this book at my local library. As Greyhound bus rides had been a huge part of my young life and college years, I was happy to take it home to peruse it. I'll be frank, I didn't bother with reading most of the text. What I was after was the pictures and seeing the spots where I had spent so much of my life. I estimate that by the time I was 23 I had ridden close to 60,000 miles on Greyhound buses. They had been part of my life. This book contains many pictures of buses and bus stations including buses with beds--how I wish I had gotten to ride on one of them!


What this book was for me was a memory book and a way to share with my husband some of my early life that I had no written or pictorial record of. What stunned me most and brought me close to tears was seeing the picture of the San Bernardino, California bus stop where many of my adventures started from and a place I thought I would never see again.

For those who have spent many days on a Greyhound bus this book can bring back many memories of some fun times and not so fun times. Lets be real here, three solid days on a bus is absolutely exhausting. And taking a 2 day bus trip home for Christmas break following an exhausting week of final exams in college is even more exhausting. But as the years go by those memories fade and the essence of the trips themselves are what comes back. Making friends, even for a few days is fun and the relationships are so different. You may find yourself chatting for hours off and on throughout the days travel and never know your new friend's name. But that wasn't important, what was important was sharing the experience with others.

I have many memories of the Greyhound Bus Lines and was very happy to find this book to experience those memories more fully. Thanks for the memories!

There are many great pictures in this book but people looking for bus and bus opertations history may be disappointed. The narrative is very heavy on advertising strategies and advertising history. On balance, however, a good read for "bus-nuts".

I gave this book to a Greyhound driver and he was more than pleased, but you needn't be a driver to enjoy this book.