Vespa

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.

This is a large format, factory authorized book. It's 9"x10.5" and 1" thick. Every page is lavished with color photos and period advertising posters. There's an immense amount of technical material included, down to what tail light lens styles appeared on which models. To a layman such as myself, it appears to be very comprehensive. At $25, if you have any interest at all in old Vespas you have to have this on your shelf.BUT, the other reviewers are spot on. The English while syntactically correct is often meaningless gibberish. There's a whole chapter on the advertising campaign "Whoever Vespas, eats apples", but what the heck does it mean? There are many sections that I was unable to make any sense of. There are a couple of chapters of artsy rambling, and that style of writing does not seem to translate well at all. The designers of the book also seem to delight in placing captions as remote from the associated photos as they possibly can. Very often I was unable to determine what photo a caption went with, even after much study.So you gotta have it, but reading it from cover to cover will be a frustrating slog. Better to dip in and read little bits that catch your eye.

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.

Great book about the Piaggio/Vespa brand. History, nice facts and stories about the Vespa brand. Good coffee table book with lots of pictures and fun facts and company information on the different models.

A real nice book of Vespa scooters. Makes a great addition to your Vespa library. Well written, and has good illustrations.

Very nice book! Great pictures and good Vespa history both written and pictoral. Images are high quality. Great book for any Vespa fan to own. I bought mine used for only $14.00 and was well worth it! Only thing is I was hoping it would be a hardcover, but the cover is stiff enough to stay flat. Still very happy with it!!

This is the most satisfying history of the Vespa scooter available. It is a well-illustrated history of models, advertising campaigns and the Vespa in popular culture. It also includes intriguing essays on the labor movement in Italy in the 50s's, the effect of a fascist directed economy on industrial innovation and the struggle of Vespa to compete in a global market. Fun AND smart!

Very comprehensive history of Vespa. Covers the first to latest issue of the famous brand. Great insight into the marketing and advertising mind of the Italian company. Photographs are nice clear and very well done. Wellworth the price. if you think you know Vespa, you will still learn something new.

The book turned out to be just what I wanted, it gave me all the information I required, all I have got to do is read it. The condition is as new.

Actually quite a good read with the development of the Vespa shown in excellent photographs from the earliest efforts to the late nineties models.

Nice book

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...