A must-read for hardcore car buffs and a must-skim for casual drivers and general readers.
The well-researched story of an iconic car.
Translated from German, Volkswagen means "people's car," an ironic moniker considering that the company was founded in 1937 by the Nazi trade union. Nonetheless, the company's signature product, the Beetle, became one of the most iconic autos in the United States. How? As Hiott writes, it was a felicitous combination of smart design, an affordable price point and savvy advertising and marketing. Even today, the company knows how to creatively raise brand awareness—the publication of this book was timed to coincide with the release of the newly designed Beetle. Hiott’s debut is an assured, enthusiastic account of a company that, oddly enough considering its rich, controversial history, has yet to receive such in-depth treatment. The author goes beyond the cars themselves, exploring why the Beetles of the 1960s and ’70s—certainly not the sexiest or most impressive automobiles—became hip. Since the majority of the action took place decades ago, there's very little in the way of conversation in the narrative, but Hiott's passionate authority makes for enjoyable reading. The sheer amount of detail may deter readers who have limited interest in the Beetle, but if you're a fan of fahrvergnügen, this is essential stuff.
A must-read for hardcore car buffs and a must-skim for casual drivers and general readers.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-345-52142-2
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2012
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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