A visually engrossing, thorough history of how Lionel trains came into being and ruled the toy world.
An illustrated history of a legendary American toy.
Carp, who served as senior editor at Classic Toy Trains magazine for 20 years, here combines narrative with dozens of photos to tell the history and surprising social impact of the iconic Lionel Train sets that thousands of Americans young and old enjoyed for decades, particularly at the peak of their popularity in the latter half of the 20th century. Carp traces the origins of the line, providing running biographical accounts of the men and women who worked behind the scenes to design both the trains and their elaborate settings, with their miniature houses and scenery and control towers. He introduces people like craftsmen Robert Sherman and Arthur Zirul, “wizards at envisioning entire settings for Lionel trains.” Through text and photos, Carp illustrates the birth and growth of a popular toy idea, describing everything from the design specifics that would allow longer and more complex trains to maneuver on straight tracks and curves to the all-important marketing campaigns that made the latest Lionel train model every year’s must-have Christmas present. He presents all this in the form of a series of mini essays on various aspects of the Lionel story, and he fills these vignettes with the perfect blend of expert knowledge and fan enthusiasm. Doubtless many of his readers had Lionel trains in their childhood, maybe doted over the details or eagerly sought out some hard-to-find item, and those readers will be completely captivated by this train ride down Memory Lane, here invaluably assisted by all the photos Carp has included, which are of course the book’s most prominent asset. But the quiet wonder of the book is its accessibility. Even readers who’d never before heard of Lionel trains will likely find themselves caught up in the story of how these train sets so captured a part of the zeitgeist.
A visually engrossing, thorough history of how Lionel trains came into being and ruled the toy world.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781933600079
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
