Customer Reviews

The Legend of Mercury

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

 

 

This book suffers less than most of Rodengen's work. His style of connecting his magazine articles into a complete book is improving. The coroprate history is accurate and for the most part complete. Still there is some of the redundancy of background supplied in each magazine article. Where I'd edit out 35% to 40% of the OMC book to make it easier to read and clearer, the Merc book only needs a 15% to 20% reduction to get to the point. Particularly disappointing in this book is the chapter on racing. Almost no research seems to have been done here. Merc's reputation was built on racing, but its a very small sideline in this book. I can not recommend the book to racing fans, not much more here than what is in Iron Fist. If you have none of the earlier books this would be a good place to start.

... read Iron Fist instead, although the photos are not identical in the two books (this book also has some interesting ones). Unlike 'Iron Fist', 'The Legend of OMC' is an uninspired cut & paste. Reading down the list of the author's publications (The Legend of This, The Legend of That, The Legend of The Other) it's clear what the game is. My only question is: how did a careful (excepting at least one technical mistake) respectable literary work like "Iron Fist" emerge from the computer of someone who apparently primarily writes books as PR for corporations?

I found this book an interesting read. Great photos of the early days of Mercury really add to the quality of this book.

A high quality book that offers little known details of the early outboard industry and Mercury/Mariner specifically. For anyone with more than a casual interest in outboards, this is a must read!

This is a well researched book that discusses everything from the beginings of Mercury Marine to present. It discusses their early day business dealings with Montgomery-Ward, and how Kiekhaefer helped them survive it all to become the largest marine brand.

This also has some excellent photos and old Mercury ads that are of interest to TRUE marine buffs.