Jesse James & His Beautiful Machines (Hardcover)

by Nathaniel Welch (Photographer)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
He’s a welder and a gearhead, a tattooed wiseguy, and stone-cold TV star. Jesse James works with his hands, making custom motorcycles for big spenders who like their choppers loud and built from the ground up. James got famous as the host of TV’s Monster Garage and Motorcycle Mania, but it all begins at his West Coast Choppers factory in Long Beach, California, where James and his crew piece together these epic handmade machines, welding and sculpting an array of gleaming pipes and fenders from scratch and polishing every detail right down to the magnum shell casings that decorate West Coast gas caps. The bikes are fast, but building each one is a year-long process, and the waiting list is long. Jesse James (named for the Old West outlaw and distant cousin) is a one-time juvenile delinquent who became an international pop culture phenomenon, a grease monkey superhero with a blowtorch, and an impossible success story that began in his mother’s garage in 1993. He does it now for both love (of his machines and their aluminum engines) and money: He has a giant $100 bill tattooed across his back, and the words "Pay up, sucker!" written in the palm of one hand. He’s not joking. In Jesse James and His Beautiful Machines, photographer Nathaniel Welch documents that life and every step of the creative process in a collection of elegant, grease-stained portraits of people and the motorcycles they create—the welding, sandblasting, painting, fueling—and of James himself roaring along some Long Beach highway on one of his beautiful machines.

About the Author
Nathaniel Welch was born in 1966 in Miami, Florida. The author of Spring Broke, (powerHouse Books, 2004), Welch’s work has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, Time, GQ, Rolling Stone, and Interview, among other publications. Welch lives and works in New York City and Los Angeles. Steve Appleford is editor of Los Angeles CityBeat, a weekly newspaper. His work has also appeared in Rolling Stone, GQ, and the Los Angeles Times, among other publications.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 112 pages
• Publisher: powerHouse Books (November 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1576874141
• ISBN-13: 978-1576874141
• Product Dimensions: 14.2 x 11.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #205,791 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not too happy Jesse!, March 30, 2008

By	Big Tim (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews

Loved the bikes but I wish it was in colour!
I understand it's ART & they are worthy of a museum. But to me the black & white sucks. If I wasn't such an enthusiest, I'd have my new door stop.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a great subject for an awesome book!, March 6, 2008

By	Lynn Hoffman (Illinois) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book with the black & white photos and Jesse and his crew could not be better. The photos are so clear you can learn from this. I highly recommend this to anyone into motorcycles or welding/fabricating.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Pretty pictures, not much else..., December 10, 2007

By	L. Berger (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a large book with page after page of stunning black & white photography. As much as I love great shots of cool bikes and thier builders, I was a bit dissapointed with this book. This is proabably my own mistake for not reading the book summary close enough. I was expecting something more like 'Jesse James, the Man and His Machines'; a book with tons of great photos but also some writing on the man, his builds, and his process. I thought a new book would have more updated writing from everything that has changed in the last few years since that other book was published. Not so... little verbage other than introduction, photo index in the back, and 4 page blurb by Steve Appleford. Those 4 pages offer some interesting insights, but dosen't quite save the book.
So if you're looking for something to 'read' abot Jesse James, try the afore-mentioned book. This photo book will end up with beer bottle rings on the cover as it sits on my coffee table.
Oh, by the way, for one last kick in the pants; "Printed and Bound in CHINA" is slapped on the back cover. Go figure.