Customer Reviews

Vespa

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

 

 

I've never written a review for Amazon before, but after buying this book and reading it cover to cover, I felt compelled to air my criticisms somewhere. Overall, I thought that it is one of the best books on the subject.
Being a Vespa owner, I was really impressed with the technical content and COLOR photos. It's the essays and figure captions that irritated me. The figure captions were frequently so vague that I couldn't tell which picture they were referring to, which is a problem because they are not co-located with the picture.
Also, many of the essays were really hard to understand, frequently too short (when they were interesting) or too long (when they were boring) and presumed a lot of knowledge of Italian 20th century history. So, I failed to get the point of many of them.
Believe me, I read these articles very closely trying very hard to get the author's point, but many of them were written in an artsy style, which was almost incomprehensible at times. So, it could be very frustrating to read. I can only conclude that they were translated from Italian and something was lost along the way.
All that being said, I still think it is worth the price for the photos and technical articles.

I rarely give 5 stars to a product, but this one is flawless. I bought this book to learn about the various vintages of Vespa so I could make an informed choice when buying one. Given the beauty of this scooter, I wanted a book of similar quality, and I was not disappointed.

This book has explained everything about the company and its products together with their long history of excellence in an easy to read, beautifully laid out volume. I now know which Vespa I want: ALL OF THEM!

Nice book, excelent pictures and lots of info related to the history of the scooter, including all sorts of stories about the role of the scooter in its day, but... The book chooses a few models to portrait in detail and leaves out a couple of important ones, including the rally models and the fact that its an "official biography" tends to make it lack objectivity very often.

All in all it's like a big, beautiful ad for the Vespa and should be bought with that in mind!

The copy I received in late January '06 seems to be an update on the original Chronicle Books edition of 2004. The newer edition has last chapters that refer to the 250 GTS model. There are a few typo's and printing errors that I did not notice in the earlier book.

Overall - this is one of the very few scooter books I have actually paid money to own. [I have interlibrary borrowed many others.] The Italian-to-English translation is puzzling here and there, but the spirit of the work gave me a deeper understanding of the sociological impact of the machine on culture and Piaggio on Italy.

This is the book that I bought after I rode a Vespa, and before I bought one of my own. It covers A-Z, and I came to know every word and photograph, cover to cover. More than that, you'll just have to get it for yourself.

I was interested in purchasing a vintage Vespa scooter, and this book is helpful in knowing the history of the company, its representative Vespa models from 1940's to recent 2005 models. It is not an exhaustive listing of every model the company ever produced. Nevertheless it gives a pretty good background of what one is looking at. Every page of this book has color and/or black/white photogrpahs, and some are shot in closeup views. If you're considering buying a vintage Vespa, I would recommend this reference book.

This book is unbelievably well-written compared to the vast majority of "motor books" [whether automotive or motorcycle-specific.] While it does have some minor technical flaws - primarily, the association of captions with the picture they refer to - the quality of the illustration is absolutely top-notch, and the translation is generally excellent, altho' there are enough oddities to remind you that many sections of the book were clearly originally offered in another language [transcripts of radio shows & foreign-language ads being prime examples.]

The bottom line is that even if you never particularly cared for Vespas over any other brand of scooter, once you've read this book, you'll have a much greater appreciation for the marque and scooters in general. To put it another way: I borrowed this book from the library rather than buying it, but having read it & enjoyed it so thoroughly, I intend to add it to my personal library as soon as funds permit! Two thumbs up!

As a confirmed "Vespa-holic" [I currently own a Vespa Granturismo. Earlier, I have owned both a Vespa ET-4 and a Vespa ET-2], this is the BEST coffee table book I have EVER seen on my beloved scooter family by Piaggio. Wonderful, documented history. Great photography. This tome oozes quality. Moreover, it is an outstanding price-value at the debut cost which is far below that of some of its lesser predecessors. This is not a mechanic's guide to the repairs or restoration of the Vespa. As the sub-title reads: "style in motion." If you are lucky enough to already possess a Vespa, you will want this book for the center piece of your library. If you are not yet fortunate to be a Vespa owner, this volume is a "must have" as your shopping guide to the various models before you make your final scooter purchase decision. Happy Scootering!

Contains a fairly comprehensive history of Vespa scooters with some nice pics, and a good overview of the distinguishing characteristics of each model, even the layout is better than average for scooter books BUT ....I JUST BOUGHT THIS BOOK IN ITALY LAST MONTH UNDER A DIIFERENT TITLE AND AUTHOR!!!! If I had known that, I would have rated it more highly because it IS a good book, but as it stands, I'm a little irritated about owning two copies. AND as far as I can tell, Elissa Stein had nothing to do with this book, so Amazon has some highly misleading information posted, especially when you combine it with a re-release of a book that's only a year old, and which already came in an english-language version, with a new cover and title. OOOOh, but I'm pissed...Note, to be fair, no web booksellers I've seen are warning people about this, so I suppose it's understandable that Amazon hasn't had their attention called to it yet, but they ARE the only ones I've seen who misattribute the author...