Vespa

Rating:
Summary: Highway to Heaven for Vespa-holics!!
Review: As a confirmed "Vespa-holic" [I currently own an ET-4 which recently replaced my "old" ET-2], this is the BEST coffee table book I have EVER seen on my beloved scooter 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, get this volume as your guide to the various models before you make your final scooter purchase decision.

Rating:
Summary: Highway to Heaven for Vespa-holics!!
Review: As a confirmed "Vespa-holic" [I currently own an ET-4 which recently replaced my "old" ET-2], this is the BEST coffee table book I have EVER seen on my beloved scooter 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, get this volume as your guide to the various models before you make your final scooter purchase decision.

Rating:
Summary: WARNING!!!
Review: 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...

Rating:
Summary: A book worthy of its subject
Review: 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!

Rating:
Summary: Great Value, but...
Review: 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.