Customer Reviews

Harley-Davidson Lore: 1966 to Present

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With a 2001 H-D softail on order, I looked forward to reading this book to learn about H-D tradition, company exploits, and product development. My reason for writing this review is to let others with similar interests know that this book offers very little on those subjects.

What Herbert Wagner has done is to merely compile a set of photographs of such things as H-D advertisements, products, and events, and annotate them in as spartan a manner as you could possibly imagine. This book borders on being completely uninformative!

Just as dissapointing is the format that was chosen by the author and his publisher. The beginning of the book, comprising the vast majority of the pages, contains photos without text. The end of the book is a series of pages that duplicate, in thumbnail sized images, all of the photos found in the beginning of the book. Next to each of these miniature images you will find a few words of descriptive text. Interestingly, the text is so small that it challenges people (even those with eagle-like vision) to read without squinting or without reaching for reading glasses.

Although I would not recommend this book to anyone, I will add that it does have a brief, well written introduction that captures the unique experience of riding a motorcycle.

This book is an OUTSTANDING collection of vintage HD photographs, set in two volumes. I would agree with one reviewer that flipping from the large picture to the thumbnail credits at the back of the books is sometimes a pain, But the quality of these old photographs is excellant and they are well printed. The only disappointment for me is the second volume which has the current era of bikes. Not as interesting as those old machines of the teens, twenties and thirties.