Motorcycle Mania: The Biker Book [Hardcover]

Matthew Drutt (Author), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

For motorcyclists and wannabes, Motorcycle Mania: The Biker Book is thrilling. Designed by the freewheeling Charles Routhier, the book itself is full of verve and expressiveness. It has tinted, '50s-style black-and-whites as well as slick, rich color photos and layouts in which bikes seem to be careering on and off the pages. Aside from the pictures, which include Steve McQueen in The Great Escape, hair-raising shots of racers leaning parallel to the ground, and a spread on chopped and channeled masterworks, this book contains a dozen pithy essays. In "Merely Motorcycles, or Something More?" Jon Thompson quotes Harley-Davidson design chief Willie G. Davidson: "In motorcycle design form follows function. But they both report to emotion." This seductive book would not be complete without the page of brief reminiscences titled "My First Bike." Deputy Sheriff Ray Smith of Miami/Dade County begins: "My parents made me promise as a teenager that I would never ride a motorcycle, but at the age of sixteen I was secretly..." --Peggy Moorman

Review

Pick up Motorcycle Mania and feel its glistening sumptuous format, its sensuous thick glossy pages. Even if you don't own a bike, this book will give you a boost of octane, a taste of what you're missing. -- The Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review, Gemma N. N. Fabris

Product Details

• Hardcover: 128 pages
• Publisher: Universe (June 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0789301326
• ISBN-13: 978-0789301321
• Product Dimensions: 12.1 x 9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,076,985 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars A Modest but Stylish Introduction to Motorcycling, September 2, 2010

By 

Jeffrey Morseburg (Los Angeles, California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Motorcycle Mania: The Biker Book (Hardcover)

Motorcycle Mania is a stylish book that was created accompany or complement the large catalog for the landmark exhibition The Art of the Motorcycle held at New York's Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1998. Although the book covers the history of the motorcycle, its purpose is not to provide readers with a comprehensive account but to cover this essential two-wheeled device's evolution in an impressionistic way. I suspect that this book may actually have been intended to serve as a substitute for the official catalog, which was probably too weighty and expensive a volume for many casual fans.

Written by a host of contributors, but few of them with any apparent background in motor sports writing, Motorcycle Mania covers basic motorcycle engineering and styling, the rise of custom motorcycles in post-World War II America, the make-up of the motorcycling community, motorcycle clothing and gear, the motorcycle community including mainstream clubs and the biker gangs that the sport has long tried to live down and the motorcycle's image on the silver screen.

The book is nicely designed if in a somewhat jarring way, but there is not a great deal of coordination between the chapters. There are a nice series of images of classic motorcycles from early bicycle-derived designs to board track racers, to the first modern motorcycles in the 1920s up to stylish recent designs from Triumph and Ducati. Motorcycle Mania is now available very inexpensively on the used book front, so it will make a decent overview for someone with a casual interest in the subject, but for those who want something in depth, there are better books, including Phil Schlling's classic book on motorcycles.

1.0 out of 5 stars A disappointing effort that perpetuates stereotypes, myths., August 3, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Motorcycle Mania: The Biker Book (Hardcover)

The problem with Motorcycle Mania is that the material in manyof the book's chapters reveals the authors of those chapters asdabblers who contributed material to a book covering a topic that is highly technical and sophisticated without having any real background in what they were writing about. They've heard the myths and stereotypes about motorcycling, and that's the perspective most have chosen to write from. In chapters by the book's editor, and others, the written material seems to support what these folks think motorcycling is about, rather than what they would actually have known it's about if they had done as little as read one of the motorcycle magazines regularly. The title alone, "Motorcycle Mania, the Biker Book," seems to promise us that between the book's covers we will find material skewed by sensationalism and by questionable pop-cultural sensibilitites. How bad, how incomplete, is the thought that went into this book? Here are two examples:! On page 124 we read, "There are few things that make you feel so sexy...as a shiny red Ducati 916...." Really? And again, on page 109, in a caption to a picture showing world champion Mick Doohan cornering in the traditional manner with one of his knee-sliders gliding along the pavement's surface, his Honda leaned way over, "Skidding on his knees to the finish line, Australian Michael Doohan...." One basic rule is that it's good when captions accurately illustrate what's happening in the picture they accompany. Rarely is that the case here. Too bad. Much was possible with this concept. Little was achieved. One star is too good for it.