Home on the Road: The Motor Home in America

Rating:
Summary: comprehensive
Review: a comprehensive compendium of the motor home in America, the experiences and pelasures of owning and traveling aroud the country in your own home-vehicle.

Rating:
Summary: An interesting reference book but not much else
Review: An un-interesting list of coaches and who built them but not much in the way of detail and very few photographs. What could have been an interesting subject is made dull by page after page of just names and cars, very few photographs, few interior photos and no floor plans. No details on how the earlier units dealt with electricity, toilets, fuel etc. Unless you want a list of people who homebuilt their own motorhome and very little else, this book could be passed over. Surely the Smithsonian has photographs of most of the oldies that would be fascinating but by and large they are not here.

Rating:
Summary: Half The Story, Anyway
Review: I didn't have a chance to look it over before I purchased this book. Had I, I probably wouldn't have bought this book.

I can appreciate the difficulty in researching and writing a book on a fragmented industry. However, like the prior reviewer, I was very disappointed by the dearth of pictures. I was hoping more for a focus on the machines themselves along with historical narrative. The book is simply rather sketchy. This might be understandable for the early years in the industry, but plenty of material to work with should be available at least from the early Travco era on.

I suppose I'm glad I read the book, as it's the only one I've read on this subject. However, I'd like to see this subject covered in a much more comprehensive manner, with regard to both writing and photography.

Rating:
Summary: Half The Story, Anyway
Review: I didn't have a chance to look it over before I purchased this book. Had I, I probably wouldn't have bought this book.

I can appreciate the difficulty in researching and writing a book on a fragmented industry. However, like the prior reviewer, I was very disappointed by the dearth of pictures. I was hoping more for a focus on the machines themselves along with historical narrative. The book is simply rather sketchy. This might be understandable for the early years in the industry, but plenty of material to work with should be available at least from the early Travco era on.

I suppose I'm glad I read the book, as it's the only one I've read on this subject. However, I'd like to see this subject covered in a much more comprehensive manner, with regard to both writing and photography.

Rating:
Summary: Great Motor Home Book
Review: In this meticulously researached volume, Roger B. White introduces us to the many types of mobile travel vehicles which evolved during the 20th century. It is a masteful piece of scholarship. But this research is expressed in a highly readable text which makes the content easily accessible to the reader unfmailiar with this subject matter. Although I wished that there had been more illlustrations in the book, the ones the author has chosen to include, mostly unseen by the public, succicntly depict the various types of "homes on the road" he is discussing. Nobody interested in the ehtos of the roadside as it evolved in the 20th cnetury should miss reading and owning this terrific volume.

Rating:
Summary: For the RVer's Bookshelf
Review: Roger B. White traces the evolution of motorhomes from early home-mades to fancy custom-mades, from the psychedelic 1964 hippie bus to today's luxurious interstate cruisers. As recreation vehicles continue to grow in popularity both as vacation lodgings and to fit the lifestyle of full-timing nomads, a look back at the history of these machines for living is like looking through a family album. Lots of old photos and reference material.

Rating:
Summary: The Big Picture with Fine Details
Review: Roger White's book gives readers a fascinating view of the range of types, uses, and meanings of motor homes in America. He has done the historical pick and shovel work to uncover the details that make this story come alive in the experiences of real people. Perhaps the best testimony I can offer is to state that when preparing a university course on the automobile in American life, I turned to this book for its revealing vignettes of Americans who chose to take their "home on the road." It has found a place on my list of optional readings for that course and should be read by anyone interested in America's cultures of mobility, inventiveness, or leisure.

Rating:
Summary: The Big Picture with Fine Details
Review: Roger White's book gives readers a fascinating view of the range of types, uses, and meanings of motor homes in America. He has done the historical pick and shovel work to uncover the details that make this story come alive in the experiences of real people. Perhaps the best testimony I can offer is to state that when preparing a university course on the automobile in American life, I turned to this book for its revealing vignettes of Americans who chose to take their "home on the road." It has found a place on my list of optional readings for that course and should be read by anyone interested in America's cultures of mobility, inventiveness, or leisure.

Rating:
Summary: My book is about the early development of motor homes
Review: The motor home did not begin with manufactured models of the 1960s. It is a century-old piece of Americana, an expression of our famous love affair with the automobile, and a mirror of the home. Early motorists invented both the concept and the vehicle. Handmade homes on wheels were the first homelike lodgings on the roadside -- long before trailers or motels appeared. Motorists made vacation travel a family experience and imposed the comfort, security, and intimacy of home on the roadside by modifying automobiles and later buses, trucks, and vans. Work vehicles -- pickup trucks, delivery trucks, and school buses -- became pleasure vehicles. The modern motor home began in the 1950s as a trailer with an engine and chassis, and it evolved into the mass-market Winnebago and its competitors. Whether handmade or manufactured, the motor home has always reflected the American home, from motor bungalows of the 1920s to rancher-style vehicles of the 1950s with aluminum siding and picture windows to today's upscale, high-tech homes on wheels.

<Snapshot: Herman and Katherine Newton, Chicago, ca. 1911. They travel through the Northeast in their Franklin touring car, pretending that it contains a bedroom and dining room. <Snapshot: Roland and Mary Conklin, Long Island, 1915. Roland's company builds a buslike vehicle, and the Conklins furnish it like a Gypsy wagon for a transcontinental trip. <Snapshot: Stan and Mary Chapman, St. Louis, 1923. They commission a house car, the Nomad, and live in it full-time, traveling and writing novels. <Snapshot: Howard Doss, Saginaw, Michigan, 1953. He installs an engine and chassis in a trailer and sells it as the Safari, which looks eerily like a Winnebago of the late 1960s. <Snapshot: The Frank family, Brown City, Michigan, 1958. Ray Frank and his teenage son, Ron, name their custom homes on wheels "motor homes" and sell them through Dodge. <Snapshot: John K. Hanson, Forest City, Iowa, 1966. He adds motor homes to his Winnebago trailer line and becomes the first mass-producer of motor homes.

Have you ever seen photographs of wooden homes on Model T chassis and wondered who the owners were? Did you ever want to look through the window? Have you wondered why there were so few motor homes between the 1920s and 1960s? I tried to answer these and many other questions in Home on the Road: The Motor Home in America.