Official book collectors thread

I just published a review of Paul Griffin's "The Past and the Spurious" at Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CkDPK4LDLCR/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

MInd you: As it has some words about Ferrari Classiche as well as some Ferrari court cases like the 250 GTO gearbox case, it's not off topic at this place

 

I was hoping you might say what you thought about it and that's really helpful. Thank you! I will now be ordering a copy myself.

 

Anyone... anyone ??

 

I think it's the text.

 

Oh so the large book contains all the photos and the booklet contains all the corresponding text, is that correct?

 

Hi Mark, yes, that's correct. The large picture book just has minimal text and captions for the images. The booklet tells the story of the development of the GTO, discusses technical details and gives Marcel Massini's updated chassis list. The textbook also quotes people who were involved in GTO development and quotes from period car magazines.

 

Seems a bit 'el cheapo' to me.

 

Sounds like an unusual format for a quality publication to me.
Has DK used that format on any of their other marque books before ?

 

Yes, 4 times to my knowledge.
Porsche 918, 959, 904 and 550.
I have two of these in my collection, so I knew what to expect.

Sent from my VTR-L09 using FerrariChat.com mobile app

 

Luckily, my Porter Press F40 book doesn't have the folded title page. I ordered mine through Motor Sport Magazine; it was list price on their page, but dropped when added to the cart, and shipping was cheaper than PP. Drop-shipped from PP and was quite well packaged. Also picked up the bookshop version of Inside Track.

Has anyone seen the other new F40 book yet, the IT/ENG by Gaetano Derosa?

 

New book from Arnaud Meunier. I received it unexpectedly, being one of the original supporter of his previous work (Ferrari 250 LM).
Title give little space to imagination: is a bilingual book about all (I suppose) the Ferrari and related stamps ever issued or released everywhere in the world. Big task for sure.

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Three books by Bernard Asset were mentioned here <a href="https://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/posts/148785500/}">Official book collectors thread</a>

I have now received my order and it seems appropriate to describe the Michael Schumacher volume (which will, no doubt, be representative of the Laffite and Andretti books too which follow the same format).

It is a compact book of some 132 pages, 24 x 22cm presented in a slipcase. The text, such as it is, comprises short (a few lines each) reminiscences from about a dozen individuals (e.g. Flavio Briatore, Jean Todt, Ross Brawn, Mika Hakkinen, Jean Alesi etc.) and is in five(!) languages (French, English, German, Italian and Japanese). In a nice touch, some of these are reproductions of handwritten notes from the contributors. But really this is a picture book. If you know the work of Bernard Asset then it is likely at least some of the images will be familiar. However, it is hard to recommend it just because the price, at 90 Euros, is far too expensive for what it is.
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Catching up on my reading, I have got round to The Dealer by Jim Ciardella which was first mentioned quite a few pages higher up this thread.

This is the story of the rise and fall of Ferrari of Los Gatos and, in particular, the main man there, Brian Burnett and is more-or-less told from his perspective in 185 pages (there are a small number of black and white pictures embedded amongst the text). That means that there are a few people painted as the bad guys whose viewpoint is not represented and some of the things like selling F40s way above list (something I understand Ferrari do not permit now, although maybe they did then) do not necessarily show Brian Burnett to be quite the good guy the author presents him as. I also couldn't help feeling the text reads a bit like it was written by a 12-year-old. In summary, quite interesting but I finished it with quite a lot of questions.

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A while ago, before The Biography, Niki Lauda was published, a mutual friend of myself and the author, Maurice Hamilton, said to me that it would be the definitive biography of Lauda. He was wrong. But wrong because, the title notwithstanding, this is not a biography at all. Rather it is a series of aspects of Niki Lauda that the author wished to write about. Indeed, it starts with the author first coming across Lauda in Formula 2 in the 1970s and doesn't really cover anything before then and omits huge swathes of Lauda's life after as well. In other words, the title does the content a great disservice by presenting the book as something it isn't. And that is unfortunate because what is within the pages are some compelling vignettes of the extraordinary character of the man. Indeed, the section on the Lauda Air crash in Thailand in 1991 is worth the price of admission alone.

If you ignore the misleading title and have an interest in Niki Lauda, then this, not very expensive, book is well worth seeking out. Certainly, until the definitive biography comes along of the man Daniel Brühl, who played him in the movie Rush, describes in this book as "like no-one else I've ever met".

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When I bought Nathan Beehl's The Sales Drive from Maranello and A postcard from Maranello I was amazed at the amount of research and passion needed to produce books like that.

Now I see a book just published documenting over 1,600 Ferrari stamps !!!
I'm not sure it's personally a book that I would add to my collection (I'm not really a stamp guy) but you certainly have to admire the effort involved in compiling a book like that.

 

With some horror, I just learned through a friend that the "Alfa Romeo 12C - Missing Link" book, for which I paid 450 euros (+115 euros shipment) for a limited edition of 250 copies, now has been published as another version of 750 copies for much, much less money! The difference is the slipcase ... See here:

https://www.gilena.it/en/book/the-missing-link-alfa-romeo-12c-prototipo-standard-edition

To buy a limited editon just to learn of another, cheap (!) "limited" edition is a very bad experience.

 

What's odd is that for a time, Ferrari of Los Gatos sponsored a NASCAR stock car which was driven by, among others, Phil Parsons. Oddly, some photos of the car show the roof number as, incorrectly, 69!

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An interesting pair of books by Michael Frostick covers many of the Ferrari specials that Pininfarina created not only for Ferrari , but other companies as well. Many detailed photos from PF, plus an interesting tabulation of the Ferrari serial numbers and PF job numbers from their file with the names of their first owners.
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Yes, these two came out in 1978, by Dalton Watson.

Marcel Massini

 

New publication in Germany:


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I understand this has been available for quite a while already. Vann re-cycling his old pix he did of the Albert Obrist cars back in the 1980s.

Marcel Massini

 

By coincidence, that's the same topic as above (see my post #4966): This book has been published for 128 euros in 2016. Now, you have another edition without slipcase for 49,90 euro. Unlucky people, who bought the 128-euro-edition ...

As it seems, some publishers have lost a great portion of honour in doing business, just trying to make as much money as possible, even if that includes cheating customers ...

 

Whenever I see the names of René Staud, Peter Vann, Jürgen Lewandowski, TeNeues, Assouline, and some others, I run for the exit!

 

And don't forget Giorgio Nada Editore!

 

Also Gunther Raupp, Rainer Schlegelmilch, Bernard Cahier and Edward Quinn.

Marcel Massini