The Illustrated Directory of Tanks of the World

Rating:
Summary: A must for the armor buff!!
Review: An excellent example of how small reference material should be written. Anyone with any interest in armored vehicles would do very well to have this book at hand. David Miller has well earned his place in the lists of good military equipment authors along with Ian Hogg and Kenneth Macksey. The book even covers the lesser known prototypes like the MBT-70 and the German pre-war experimental models. I only wish this easy to read and well researched style would be copied more often.

Rating:
Summary: THE TITLE SAYS IT ALL
Review: David Miller's "The Illustrated Directory of Tanks of the World" is a compact, easy-to-read, chronological guidebook to the weapon which has dominated land warfare since World War I. Featured are well over a hundred tanks of all nationalities with three times that many photographs and illustrations, and each tank is succintly described in terms of armament, armor, performance, and deployment history. All the major designs are here, including:
*M-4 Sherman, the American workhorse of WWII
*T-34, the innovative Russian trend-setter
*The awesome Tiger, the most infamous tank ever
*The mighty Merkava, Israel's contemporary "war chariot"
*Sweden's turretless S-tank, a bold but failed experiment
*England's dwarfish Scorpion, with a variant for every need
*America's M1 Abrams, which thanks to its dominant performances in the Middle East and its lethal "silver bullet" anti-tank shell now reigns as the world's pre-eminent AFV
*and dozens of other great and small vehicles from all over the globe and every major armored conflict.

Sadly, the book is marred by a number of typos and editorial misques. These are generally minor but nonetheless jarring, and do detract somewhat from the book's overall authoritativeness. Even so, this is a tremendous value considering the sheer volume of information jam-packed into its 480 pages. Mr. Miller is to be commended for the work which went into such a project, and his book is an easily recommended purchase for any fan of tank design or armored warfare.

Rating:
Summary: THE TITLE SAYS IT ALL
Review: David Miller's "The Illustrated Directory of Tanks of the World" is a compact, easy-to-read, chronological guidebook to the weapon which has dominated land warfare since World War I. Featured are well over a hundred tanks of all nationalities with three times that many photographs and illustrations, and each tank is succintly described in terms of armament, armor, performance, and deployment history. All the major designs are here, including:
*M-4 Sherman, the American workhorse of WWII
*T-34, the innovative Russian trend-setter
*The awesome Tiger, the most infamous tank ever
*The mighty Merkava, Israel's contemporary "war chariot"
*Sweden's turretless S-tank, a bold but failed experiment
*England's dwarfish Scorpion, with a variant for every need
*America's M1 Abrams, which thanks to its dominant performances in the Middle East and its lethal "silver bullet" anti-tank shell now reigns as the world's pre-eminent AFV
*and dozens of other great and small vehicles from all over the globe and every major armored conflict.

Sadly, the book is marred by a number of typos and editorial misques. These are generally minor but nonetheless jarring, and do detract somewhat from the book's overall authoritativeness. Even so, this is a tremendous value considering the sheer volume of information jam-packed into its 480 pages. Mr. Miller is to be commended for the work which went into such a project, and his book is an easily recommended purchase for any fan of tank design or armored warfare.

Rating:
Summary: Very good as detailed reference-- lacking in visuals\polish
Review: First of all I was surprised at the ease of reading through this book. I am not a military buff and had purchased it to look up references in movies, videogames, and other books. Instead I ended up reading through it in its entirety. While it may seem exhausting and at first glance, it is quite interesting when read in small doses. The individual tank biographies are well written and full of information. I can't really comment on the historical accuracy, as I wouldn't know, but it is very detailed and seems to include almost everything you would want to know. It covers not only the basic stats on the vehicles but also goes into great detail with some fascinating developmental history and all the different variations. My major complaint with the book is the low quality of imagery and some layout issues. While some of the of the included photos, paintings, and drawings are good, quite a few have a very cheap feel to them as though they were low resolution scans from other books or the web. Some are very fuzzy, low-res JPEGS that have been stretched page wide, and others seem oddly chosen as they don't show much of the tanks themselves. While I realize many of the old tanks are difficult to find imagery for, even some of the new ones are poorly represented or at odd angles. Also some of the layout is confusing. Many of the images cross both pages, but with the deep binding crease (since the book is fairly thick) sometimes a quarter inch of the image is obscured and some of the text difficult to read. Even though it is a budget book, I think it could have benefited from a graphic design makeover and maybe a bit more polish (more standard\organized layouts for quick browsing, national flags above the vehicle, better laid out intro stats, and more precise imagery) like some of the similar (and under $10) books I have on military aircraft. Still if these kinds of thing don't bother you the reading itself is quite good and especially at the price.

Rating:
Summary: Very good as detailed reference-- lacking in visuals\polish
Review: First of all I was surprised at the ease of reading through this book. I am not a military buff and had purchased it to look up references in movies, videogames, and other books. Instead I ended up reading through it in its entirety. While it may seem exhausting and at first glance, it is quite interesting when read in small doses. The individual tank biographies are well written and full of information. I can't really comment on the historical accuracy, as I wouldn't know, but it is very detailed and seems to include almost everything you would want to know. It covers not only the basic stats on the vehicles but also goes into great detail with some fascinating developmental history and all the different variations. My major complaint with the book is the low quality of imagery and some layout issues. While some of the of the included photos, paintings, and drawings are good, quite a few have a very cheap feel to them as though they were low resolution scans from other books or the web. Some are very fuzzy, low-res JPEGS that have been stretched page wide, and others seem oddly chosen as they don't show much of the tanks themselves. While I realize many of the old tanks are difficult to find imagery for, even some of the new ones are poorly represented or at odd angles. Also some of the layout is confusing. Many of the images cross both pages, but with the deep binding crease (since the book is fairly thick) sometimes a quarter inch of the image is obscured and some of the text difficult to read. Even though it is a budget book, I think it could have benefited from a graphic design makeover and maybe a bit more polish (more standard\organized layouts for quick browsing, national flags above the vehicle, better laid out intro stats, and more precise imagery) like some of the similar (and under $10) books I have on military aircraft. Still if these kinds of thing don't bother you the reading itself is quite good and especially at the price.

Rating:
Summary: Great Historicial Index of Tanks
Review: I think that this book is a great reference of all the tanks that have been produced from WWI to the present day. It shows all the techinal info and history of the tanks.

A great book for gear-heads and history buffs alike.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent value for money!
Review: This is not the best reference book on tanks, but it is absolutely the best reference you'll find for under ten dollars! It is a small format, a bit larger than a paperback dictionary, but the book contains an amazing amount of information, and most illustrations are in color. If you want coverage of famous vehicles, like the Sherman tank, or the T-34, or the M1 Abrams, there are better specialty publications. But for obscure vehicles, this book is excellent. It helps decipher the myriad of new tank designs now coming out of China and the states that once made up the Soviet Union. It also gives coverage of hard to find historical subjects like Polish, French, and Italian armor in 1939-40. Think of it as an ilustrated tank dictionary.

Rating:
Summary: A Small Complete Reference Guide
Review: This small book is a very good guide to modern and some old tanks but it can be more oriented towards the more acknowledgeable reader. It is a good book for people who now little or some about tanks but has too little information for someone who has considerable knowledge about tanks. This book has great pictures, specifications, armourment, and other small facts as well as some development history. I would highly reccommend this book to anyone who likes to raed about modern day tanks. This book doesn't include much on experimental tanks though.