Customer Reviews

Greyhound Buses 1914-2000 Photo Archive

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

 

 

The title of the book describes the content of this book very well. It is a photo archive of greyhound buses. Each (large) photo has a short description. All photos are of a good quality. They deserve however a better quality of paper. Do not expect a detailed history of the Greyhound in this book. What I missed in this book was a fleetlist.

I'm a big fan of Greyhound having travelled around the State in the sixties and I love their buses, especially the Scenicruiser (drat, only six photos!) so this book is a good addition to my very small Greyhound library. There are over a hundred large photos starting with the first Greyhound in 1914 and every other Greyhound bus up to 2000. The captions are full of interesting detail and they provide the only text.

A thing that troubles me about the book is the very bland presentation, so typical of this kind of fan orientated publishing. Some of the photos could have bled of the page, others could have gone across the gutter, some of the pages could have been black with white captions, anything to give the pages a lift and make the publication sparkle. Still a bland book of Greyhound photos is better than no book at all.

I have every single bus book written by Bill Luke. We American bus fans owe him a great debt of gratitude for starting the American bus book series w/ Iconografix. Before Bill Luke, there was literally no bus books devoted to American buses. In fact, the few written were often by British authors! Bill started this bus book series and now it appears other bus fans are starting to write books of their own.

As for this book, it is a great pictorial history of Greyhound, from its infancy to its heydays in the 40s and 50s to the present day (2000) era. Greyhound is a skeleton of its former self now, w/ mostly low income, elderly, and students riding their buses. But, if you read the book, you will see that buses in their heyday was every bit as glamarous as train or air travel. Bill carefully presents Greyhound buses from each decade with very useful captions. All the famous buses of their days, including the Yellow Zs, Mack BK, GM 4104 Highway Traveler, Scenicruiser, MCI series of buses, etc, are represented. Any bus fan, especially Greyhound fans, would find this book indispensible. There's some criticism by others that there's not enough caption or that the pages are black and white. But, as mentioned in the title, this is a "photo archive". Its a pictorial history. I'm sure the printing cost of color was the reason its black and white.

I cannot believe this book is worth 4-5 times what it was when I bought it new in 2000. I buy every American bus book as soon as it comes out. I am proud to say I have every Bill Luke book and every bus book produced by Iconografix. My bus library now numbers over 50 books and I only started accumulating them since about 1998.

What a photo album! Loved it.So many buses here I never knew about.About time someone put together a book on Greyhound buses.Photos of vehicles like Pickwick Duplex from 1933 and the NiteCoaches in 1932 amazed me.(I hope these ideas encourage designers of coaches today to update them.)

If you love highway buses then you'll love this book.Beautiful photos throughout will impress.