Customer Reviews

The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is easily one of the top four reference guides for shopping carts available on the market today. It does an excellent job of covering the following topics:

* Shopping carts

Overall, I heartily endorse this product.

Flick through this book and many of you might think Julian Montague needs to get a life, roaming round the North Eastern states snapping the death throes of shopping carts, indeed. The book is a bit of fun though and quite cleverly thought out, but maybe the joke wears a bit thin by page 176.

The five sections explain all you'll need to know to about classifying carts, section two lists Class A: False Strays, Types 1-11 and section three Class B: True Strays, Types 1-22. Each type gets a page with a cool photo and details about what to look for. The longest section is four, titled Selected Specimens, with more than three hundred photos of battered and dead carts in the environment, I think the ones in snow look best and they are categorized according to either Class A or B. It won't surprise you to know that the author toiled for six years creating all this.

The design and printing of the book is fine and the author takes a pretty good cart photo. The only thing missing, I thought, was some reference to their manufactures, there can't be too many and they most likely all have unique features. This would certainly have added to the thrill of spotting a Class B, Type 11 (train damaged cart) made by A N Other Inc.

*United Brotherhood of Shopping Carts. Affiliated to AFL/CIO.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

There's no bio for the author, but I hope it helped him get tenure! Designed like a birding guide, it is funny beyond belief. Library of Congress classifies it as an "artistic photography" book, but it has a very droll social anthropology feel about it.

One of the most complete and well thought out works I have ever encountered. Montague's language coupled with his beautiful photography give the lowly carts individual personalities. Refreshing, for an art piece, it never takes itself too seriously. It will change the way you look at the urban environment, and most importantly it's endlessly fun.

I would love to rate this particular treatise as highly as I did the author's previous works: "Potato Science - An Ethical Discourse" was particularly well written and contained multiple helpful diagrams and bulleted instructions.

Unfortunately, this latest work is disproportionately lacking in quality. The images of the shopping carts are of such a low quality that it is difficult to identify one breed from another. Recently, whilst working in the field, I stumbled across a nest of young carts which I could not easily identify using my guide. It was impossible to tell if they were Walmart Warblers or the less common (and more exciting!) Greater Wheeled Tuckwood. This forced me to get closer than I would normally want to get to these magnificent creatures, and I risked disturbing their habitat.

I was forced to leave the nesting area anyway when the mother cart returned: finding me near to her offspring she became enraged and attacked me, bumping into my ankles quite ferociously. Fortunately I was able to escape with only minor injuries.

If the book had been more clear on the matter of identification I feel I could have avoided the attack, which could have been a vicious mauling. 2/5

I have to admit, the book got me looking at stray shopping carts in a whole new way! I find myself eying a collection of carts in the corner of a parking lot, considering their classification and wishing I had my camera with me.

I know, it's weird.

Not everyone is going to appreciate this book, or its deadpan, clinical nature. But if you have a weakness for the strange and/or absurd, this will be a great book to have on your coffee table when you have company over. Especially if you have a Petersen's Guide right next to it.

And the front half of a shopping cart mounted like a hunter's trophy over your fireplace.

I wonder if there's a market for those.

This book is for those of us who believe that shopping cart theft is a gateway crime to bigger things. Much like pot is known as a gateway drug to harder drugs. Learn to identify the stray carts in your own neighborhood!

I highly recommend this book to everyone who likes Zombies, but don't ask me why.

Though this may be well trod territory, I enjoyed his original take on the shopping cart epidemic. Between his witicisms and his arcane research approach, I found it a hilariously depresing work. One of the best novels I've read in years.

I'm over the age of thirteen.

This riveting adventure into the hidden world of shopping carts truly captivated my attention. The detail and depth used by the author is unmatched in modern literature. The comprehensive narrative was only further emphasized by the striking photographs taken of shopping carts in both their native habitats and in the wild. As with so many objects we interact with in daily life, these champions of carriagedom are often neglected or taken for granted. I'm so happy to see them recognized for their true value.

I gave the book 4 stars because I think it is a great read. However, I would love to have seen at least a chapter dedicated to the evolution of the shopping cart. I understand this book is intended to be a snapshot of shopping carts in today's society, but a background would have really built up the reader's understanding.

This book brings much-needed rigor to the field of stray shopping cart classification by introducing a taxonomy that is both precise and intuitive. All specimen are illustrated with high-quality color photographs of often haunting and transcendental beauty.