Richard Ford Books

Richard Bak is a long-time resident of Detroit and Dearborn, Michigan, and doubtless absorbed much of the Ford legacy simply by growing up in a place that Ford formed. This book is not exactly a corporate history, not exactly a biography and not exactly a tell-all celebrity book, but it has elements of each. The most interesting pieces include the extended reminiscences by people who lived and worked closely with the Fords, and especially with Edsel's family. He has long lingered in the shadow of his famous father and it is somewhat surprising to discover that he had some fine qualities. These reminiscences have poignant moments that establish the veracity of any number of proverbs on money, happiness and the foibles of the great. The book is reasonably well written and fairly concise. It recapitulates the essentials of the Ford story, though it glances over the evolution of management and organization at the company. We assure you that you'll get the full Ford saga here, though you may have to extrapolate the business lessons it teaches for yourself.

Richard Bak is a long-time resident of Detroit and Dearborn, Michigan, and doubtless absorbed much of the Ford legacy simply by growing up in a place that Ford formed. This book is not exactly a corporate history, not exactly a biography and not exactly a tell-all celebrity book, but it has elements of each. The most interesting pieces include the extended reminiscences by people who lived and worked closely with the Fords, and especially with Edsel's family. He has long lingered in the shadow of his famous father and it is somewhat surprising to discover that he had some fine qualities. These reminiscences have poignant moments that establish the veracity of any number of proverbs on money, happiness and the foibles of the great. The book is reasonably well written and fairly concise. It recapitulates the essentials of the Ford story, though it glances over the evolution of management and organization at the company. We assure you that you'll get the full Ford saga here, though you may have to extrapolate the business lessons it teaches for yourself.

HENRY AND EDSEL offers insight into the characters of Henry and Edsel Ford and what it was that compelled them. The book presents a strong sense of time and the Fords' presence in and contribution to the events around them. The book is filled with interesting anecdotes. The best part for me were the several chapters called "rearview mirror" -- accounts written by eyewitnesses who recorded their version of important events: Edsel's death, the riots, etc. The author also introduced us to some of the hard workers and bright people Henry surrounded himself with in order to get to the top. One person CAN change the world -- but almost never alone.

I really wanted to like this book. It has a lot going for it: two troubled main characters, an intriguing setting (an island on the Mississippi River), some sex, a crotchety old man, and some of the best descriptions of a place you'll ever read. Ford is definitely a writer of power. I felt the importance of the setting in his detailed attention to every tree and rut in the road, yet I couldn't find a strong motivation for the two characters to be there. Robard Hewes is a lost soul, similar to other Ford characters (a lot like Quinn in *The Ultimate Good Luck*, but less self-confident) who goes south for all the wrong reasons. Robard I can sort of understand, but Sam Newel, the law student from Chicago searching for meaning in his life so he doesn't become like his father, just doesn't fit, and once he arrives on the island, he doesn't really DO much, except go on a fateful fishing excursion with the crusty old Mr. Lamb. I enjoyed reading it, but I'd probably not read it again. A little more focus would've greatly improved this first book by a wonderful writer. It should be read by all first time novelists to see how well setting and characterization can be done (and also to see how much a writer learns in comparison to his later work).

Richard Ford's first book, A Piece Of My Heart, scored big with reviewers across the country, but has largely been ignored by the reading public.

All the more a pity, since this book deserves a large readership, perhaps even as much or more so than The Sportswriter or Independence Day. If there is a fault with this book, it is that it flows too easily. It is the kind of work that can be devoured in a few hours. It reads so smoothly that it's rich detail can be easily overlooked.

The cinematic quality of this work cannot be understated. The sometimes stark, sometimes lush and haunting landscapes of this novel are so rich in description that they are seen effortlessly and because they flow so easily, the unwary reader is tempted to speed ahead like a traveler on the interstate, driving at breakneck speed through breathtakingly beautiful scenery.

Ford's characters are quirky and so three dimensional that they rise up before the reader with startlingly familiarity. I suspect that Ford loses many of his more urbane readers with the grittiness of these characters--their down home rustication and the sense of danger inherent in their ferocious living of lives from moment to moment.

For those who plunge into this work with abandon (as I did on my first reading), one warning: slow down. Savor the power of each scene. Don't go crashing through from page to page like a tourist in New York with one day to see the Metropolitan Museum. Enjoy each wonderfully crafted scene and avoid the temptation to read through at breakneck speed.

The amazing juxtaposition of whimsy, darkness and doom are quite extraordinary in this work. The plot, ostensibly, revolves around the actions of Robard Hewes, an uneducated but shrewdly obsessed and compulsive character who drives from his dusty desert home in California to his past in Mississippi in pursuit of Buena, a wanton married woman whose siren call is enough to overwhelm Robard with an inexplicable burning desire.

Sam Newell is Hewes opposite. Newell, a severely depressed man down from Chicago on the suggestion of his lover for some ill-advised convalescence as a guest at her grandfather's island hunting camp, is filled with self loathing and unintentionally invites the scorn of almost everyone he encounters. Newell, on the verge of commencing practice as a lawyer has broken down and drifts rudderless throughout the action of this work. Nevertheless, he is an important character and his short musings on his childhood are remarkably evocative and superb and this along with the stark nature of his intellect give insight into the workings of Ford's mind and the detached alienated characters that evolve in his later works.

Mark Lamb (the grandfather), his wife, and TVA (his cook and handyman), constitute an extraordinarily quirky and wonderfully drawn backdrop for a good part of the action in this novel. Lamb is one of the most endearingly cranky old men you will run across in any short novel. The odd domestic scenes that take place on the island are redolent with humor and are brilliantly drawn.

I cannot recomment A Piece Of My Heart too highly. It is a must read for those who appreciate good literature.

There are a few four-letter words that would fill in the title of this review, but I can't say them on a family-friendly website. I think 'garbage' will suffice. Pointless garbage if you want to be more specific. The only reason it doesn't get 1-star from me is that it's Ford's first novel and I have a tendency to be lenient on debut novels.

The story involves Robard Hewes, the hick living in California, who decides to up and leave his wife to go to Arkansas to find the woman who's been sending him letters for quite some time. There's also (for whatever reason) Sam Newell, a law student in Chicago who's bummed out about life (for whatever reason) and goes to a hunting camp on an island in Mississippi owned by his girlfriend's grandfather. Robard gets a job on that island and at the same time has a brief affair with Buena, the woman who's been writing him and is unhappy with her washed-up career minor league pitcher husband.

Robard was a fun character--gruff, mysterious, and yet driven for some reason to do something even he knew was stupid. I'm not sure why the whole book didn't revolve around him, because Sam Newell served no purpose whatsoever in the story. Ford didn't even bother to follow up on his story, that's how unimportant he was to the plot. Robard is the story, and the point of his story is that sometimes people make dumb choices and have to pay the consequences for them. A good point, but one I already knew from reading Richard Russo's far superior "Nobody's Fool", which I recommend over this.

Mr. Lamb is another interesting character, the wacky old Southern coot with an island not even on the maps. Mr. Lamb pays Robard to drive around and run any poachers off his private kingdom while he goes out fishing with his "telephone", an electrical device that has grave consequences for Mr. Lamb. Mrs. Lamb always had a certain amount of mystery attached to her, because at first she just sits around listening to the radio, but later we find out she handles a lot of the business affairs. TVA is the black servant who would be a horrible racial stereotype except for an undercurrent of resentment towards his employer. Buena is a snotty brat and it soon becomes clear to Robard what me, as the reader, figured out long ago and that is she's not worth crossing the country and risking his life for--Helen of Troy she is not.

I never did quite understand the point of the interludes with Sam and his father. Sam was so unimportant that I'm not sure why bringing up scattered episodes (most little more than a page or a few paragraphs) of selling starch in the South was necessary. It didn't add much in my mind to Sam or to the story in general. Like Sam himself, those episodes could have been done away with.

There are some nice descriptions, but otherwise Ford's writing itself is what brings down this book. For some reason he had a fear of pronouns when writing this book that manifested itself in ambiguous "He"s. For example, Ford might say something like, "Mr. Lamb sprinkled salt on his food. He pushed away from the table." Now you'd think the "he" in the second sentence means Mr. Lamb, since he was the subject of the last sentence, but no, it refers to Robard or Sam, depending on if the part of the book focuses on Robard or Sam. That led me to a lot of confusion and I'm still trying to figure out why an editor didn't take umbrage with it. As with Ford's "The Ultimate Good Luck", I also had trouble following some of the action because the details were sketchy about what was happening, such as how (and why) Sam ended up in the water in the beginning of the story.

I wouldn't recommend this book, because Ford does go on to better things like "The Sportswriter" and the Pulitzer-winning "Independence Day". Those demonstrated how much the author developed as a writer and are much more worthy of your time. However, if you're a fan of Richard Ford, (I'm not) then you'll want to read this as a curiosity to know where the author got his start.

Though scores of summer writing conferences have been established throughout the last several decades, one of the oldest and most respected is the Squaw Valley Community of Writers in Northern California. Founded in 1969 by novelists Blair Fuller and Oakley Hall, the Community has sponsored workshops in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, screenwriting, playwriting, and nature writing. For almost forty years, published authors have dispensed hard-earned knowledge about the craft to conference attendees who harbor the dream of someday seeing their names emblazoned across the covers of bestselling novels or story collections.

For the first time, the Squaw Valley Community of Writers shares the wisdom of some of its contemporary staff members. Edited by Lisa Alvarez and Alan Cheuse with an introduction from Richard Ford, Writers Workshop in a Book (Chronicle Books) includes essays on many aspects of fiction writing from eighteen well-published authors. Regardless of whether reading this book will inspire a beginning writer to commence or finish a full-length manuscript, it is a fine and truly entertaining addition to the ever-growing bookshelf of "how to" tomes.

In the first essay, "How to Write a Novel," Diane Johnson informs us that "most people in their lives think at one time or another of writing" a novel. Indeed, she read somewhere that "90 percent of college-educated women, at one stage or another of their lives, actually begin one." Of course, very few actually get around to writing a novel because there are many obstacles including the fact that "it's an awful lot of work." But if you are willing to put in the time, Johnson offers very practical threshold decisions you must make before moving forward: "First you have to plan it. What will happen in it? Who will tell it?" Johnson identifies and explains the "[s]mall and large choices" you must make as you plot out your novel. Her advice is sound, honest, to the point, and decidedly unromantic.

Alan Cheuse's piece is as wonderfully audacious as its title promises: "'Here's Lookin' at You, Kid': A Brief History of Point of View." Cheuse notes that with movies, there is essentially one point of view which "employ[s] the simple equation of camera lens and eye of the audience member, or the so-called God-like point of view." Literature, of course, has offered through the millennia many more options for POV. In examining the history of the point of view in literature, Cheuse begins with ancient Greek epic and then moves to biblical authors and then Chaucer, Dante, Herodotus, Cervantes, up through the ages to such writers as Joyce, García Márquez, Rhys and Atwood. All the while, Cheuse dissects how these authors used POV in their works and cautions that "[m]ost new writers slip and slide between third-person subjective and the general..." This essay is quite a heady (and fun) ride.

Some of the essays consist of war stories which are entertaining but also offer their own lessons. For example, Amy Tan recounts in "Angst and the Second Book" how after the publication of her wildly successful first novel, she was confronted with the similarly wildly high expectations for her, as yet, unwritten next novel. One writer told her that the second effort was "doomed no matter what you do." Why? Critics will complain that "it is too much like the first," and readers will complain "that it is too different." Tan's battles with self doubt and doomsayers are comforting in some ways because she lets us know that bestselling authors must do what beginning writers do: persevere despite the multitude of reasons to give up and move to something more practical.

The essays run from the basics to the spiritual. Sands Hall and Al Young dig into the nitty-gritty of scene construction, dialogue, theme, voice and language. Anne Lamott and Louis B. Jones plumb the mysteries of writing. Other pieces recount the rather odd convergence of circumstances that resulted in the writing of a first novel (Michael Chabon), or the fear of finishing a novel (Mark Childress). These and the other essays make one realize that such a book could not be dedicated to other professional pursuits such as the law or operating a chain of restaurants. Creating fiction is, indeed, a singular way of life.

Though one of the editors of Writers Workshop in a Book is Latina, there is not one essay by a Latino writer. But this likely will change in future editions based on the upcoming Squaw Valley faculty members and guest speakers that include Dagoberto Gilb, Michael Jaime-Becerra and Alex Espinoza. Such authors could delve into their use of "code switching" (moving from English to another language and back again) in a way that allows their characters to ring true while not leaving behind those readers who do not speak Spanish. Also missing is any meaningful discussion of the publishing industry's often ham-handed approach to writers of color. Despite these omissions, Cheuse and Alvarez have brought together fascinating, instructive and meaningful advice from some of our finest contemporary writers.

[This review first appeared in La Bloga.]

First of all, they should have called this book something like "Notes and Experiences from the Squaw Valley Writer's Community, because a "work shop in a book" it is not. At least I hope they give more practical advice at their workshops than what is (mostly) found in this book.
While I did enjoy the "from the writing life" perspective of Amy Tan's piece and felt enough connection with Diane Johnson and Janet Fitch to want to pick up one of their books I can't say I really came away with anything new to apply to my prose. Much of this book reads like a multiple biography and while I suppose it's interesting to hear about brainstorming sessions, agent distress, title problems etc, it's not what I expected and it's not what the title promised.
Anne Lamott's piece in this book is just so so, but I do highly recommend her book Bird by Bird, also Noah Lukeman's "the First Five Pages," and Stephen King's "On Writing." If you are in the market for an inside look into the writing life (with a few quick notes on what techniques might work for you) I just finished David Morrell's book "Lessons from a Lifetime of Writing" and found it interesting and insightful.
But this book just isn't worth it. It was a quick read but there's just not much substance. I'm assuming the Squaw Valley workshops are much better than this.

This book is a collection of essays about writing, going back about 15 to 20 years. All of the essays are written by current or former Squaw Valley Workshop teachers or former students. The introduction is by Richard Ford, himself a former student. Given the venerable reputation of the essayists, I expected down-to-earth pragmatic advice on how to achieve better fiction; what I got, instead, with essay titles like "A Note to an Unpublished Writer" and "Fear of Finishing," was something that read like a self-help manual for writers.

There was one exception. Janet Fitch's essay, "Coming to Your Senses" was an outrageously practical essay on how to use unique verbs to describe ordinary perceptions. For example, Fitch writes: "A girl has moist skin, a literal description. If we like her, we can describe it as dewy, slick, glossy. If we don't, it's greasy, sweaty, oily." Fitch's essay is packed with practical technique like this.

The other essays, unfortunately, were more general in nature. A few talked about scene, plot, point of view, but often in generalities and using arcane examples.

Some of the essays were transcribed from actual talks. They read well, but it seems like you had to be there to get the overall effect.

I recommend Curious Attractions: Essays on Fiction Writing and Stephen King's On Writing for a more practical approach to learning fiction.

All in all, not a bad book, but I was hoping for something more pragmatic.

I read this book during a binge of early 20th century gay fiction and I wouldn't say it was 'dreadful.' If you're talking esoterics, Ronald Firbanks is the bloke you want! Wyndham Lewis was equally unrewarding. There was at least some humor in The Young and Evil, when the protag pukes on the straight woman! I laughed. The copy they interlibrary loaned me was printed in Paris on handmade paper--you probably won't find anything so opulent on Amazon . . . I digress, I caught more of a Joycean feeling than Stein but I can't stand that woman!

A dreadful novel, pretentious, arty and clearly indebted to Gertrude Stein in its alliterative passages of nonsensical phrases. The characters are cardboard, the plot non-existent and good chunks are completely unintelligible. Saying all that, I found the book fascinating as a historical document of gay life in New York of the early 30's. Village Bohemia, gay bars, the drag balls, cruising on Riverside Drive, gay bashing, rent parties are all here, and written by those who lived it. Those looking for sex scenes will be deeply disappointed because none exist...just the fact that the male characters went to bed or paired off with each other was risqué enough to put terror in the hearts of potential publishers. But as an illustration of George Chauncey's Gay New York none better could be found, an authentic document of the times. Worth every affected paragraph.

Well, I read a few books by Woodward. I haven't been that impressed by any of them. After I finished this one, I closed the door on Bob Woodward.
First of all I don't like the fiction type format for a history book. I realize that he and his staff of junior writers are trying to make it interesting and more enjoyable, but when they write things like: Judge So and So thought to himself, what a complete jerk this guy is. That's going too far for me. That's fiction not history.
Next, I think this accounting was rather ridiculous. This book makes Jimmy Carter out to be a foul mouthed, conniving manipulator of people and the poor press; on the other hand Gerald Ford comes off as a ex-altar boy with only the purest apolitical motivations. Come on!
I struggled and struggled to finish reading this book, but that's the last one by Woodward and friends for me.
I've read a couple by Bernstein. I think Mr. Bernstein was the real thing in this duo. This Woodward is a joke.

Heard the taped version of SHADOW: FIVE PRESIDENTS
AND THE LEGACY OF WATERGATE by Bob Woodward . . . it
is a very interesting, as well as disturbing, look at what it takes to be president in this country.

Because of Watergate, the press no longer takes a "hands off"
approach to what is being done in the White House . . . consequently, Woodward points out that all presidents--from Nixon through Clinton--seem to have had lapses in judgment, during which they either did not tell the truth or had others help cover it up for them.

I got a fresh perspective on Ford's pardon of Nixon, and though
I had thought I had known a lot about the Monicagate morass,
I now know even more (including a lot of dirt not uncovered
elsewhere).

Fortunately, Woodward is only heard at the beginning and
the end . . . he does not have a great speaking voice, that's
for sure . . . the rest was narrated by James Naughton . . . his
impressive baritone voice made for easy listening . . . moreover, he actually sounds like many of the characters he portrays, such as James Carville, Ronald Raegan and Jimmy Carter.

Another Bob Woodward book, another masterpiece. I am getting great pleasure from his books. Detailed research, witnesses, and main character interviews are combined to revealed truth with every respect. In Shadows, he discovers the last five presidents scandals and events around them. Book starts with Ford, Nixon and Watergate, This is the most interesting chapter of the book, and it is explained with every detail. Secondly, Carter and payment made to Jordan King and Iran Hostage crisis. You can feel Carter's pain in this chapter. After that, of course Reagan and Iran-Contra weapon sale and Oliver North incident. This chapter is also very interesting. The role Regan and Senior Bush is much different than public knows. Senior Bush's role is very controversial. There are always something learn from his books. When Senior Bush was at the White House, subject is the war again. First gulf war and Saddam stories given. There is also little bit information about Bush-Saudi relations in that time. Inevitable, Mr. Bandar's name is also here. Finally, Clinton era, Whitewater and Monica. This is also very big chapter. In Whitewater investigation is explained very well. Also Monica scandal is the fun part of the book. Star and Clinton have not a bad relation as we know.

This is the best book for near presidential history. I give all the credits to Mr. Woodward for this great book. Buy it and read it!

I think this is a pretty good book on the Presidency of the United States since Watergate. Of course, Mr. Woodward played a significant role in reporting Watergate and has written extensively about the Presidency since then.

This book examines the various difficulties and scandals the Presidents since Nixon have had and the shadow the legacy of Watergate fell on those events and affected how they were handled and perceived. The most significant event in the way these things played out was the creation of the Independent Counsel. While I was never wild about the Independent Counsels before I read this book, I have come to the conclusion that it was an awful idea and an abuse of our Constitution. While the office was designed to not be accountable to the President to afford a credible ability to investigate the Executive Branch, it has no reasonable boundaries or limits and is not subject to any of the checks or balances that enable our government to function as reasonably as it does.

Freed from any limits of time, budget, or public accountability it is not surprising that many, but not all, of these Independent Counsels end up pursuing all kinds of things apart from what they were originally charged to pursue. My chief conclusion from reading this book is that this was a bad law with worse execution and should never be revived. Good riddance!

Half of the book is devoted to the Clinton scandals. The other large section is Iran-Contra. How you perceive Woodward's balance and objectivity will be colored by your personal politics. I have to admit that I found my own reading of the book varied at different points because of my own view of these scandals and whether or not I agreed with Woodward or felt that his own political biases were creeping in (which is impossible to avoid). But all-in-all there is a lot of good reporting here and is written in way that is easy to read. There are lots of endnotes to document the sources for the various statements, meetings, and conclusions drawn.

I recommend the book highly.

The first line in Micahel Lind's deeply provocative treatise on the modern American conservative movement UP FROM CONSERVATISM kicks you in the stomach, regardless of your political beliefs:"American Conservatism is dead." Like the political Nietzsche he is, Bob Woodward, in SHADOW: FIVE PRESIDENTS AND THE LEGACY OF WATERGATE, finishes that statement in this 500-plus page tome by saying, essentially, "...and Nixon has killed it."

None other than Gore Vidal has nicknamed America the *United States of Amnesia* so often that the trueness of it stops it from being funny. Yet any psychologist worth their salt will tell you the many reasons why memory, in a person or culture, is often the first thing to be EXORCISED. It isn't always something that leaves willingly. Bob Woodward brings common sense psychology--memory--back into the discussion of what has happened to the presidency, and America's relationship to it, since the quasi-psychotic Nixon disgraced it in the early 1970's. He reveals this with SHADOW, not by calling out and judging the Nixonians from the perspective of opinion, but via showing and analysing actual history. The degree to which the entire concept and institution of the American Presidency has been almost irrevocably debilitated by Watergate is the subject of this book, and it cannot be ignored in our time after reading it. In revealing the new cynically invasive psychic architecture of American politics, built on the destroyed remnants of the trusted Tao of FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, LBJ and Kennedy, he offers a glimpse of what Watergate symbolized about Nixon's soul. And what that tortured soul has meant for American culture today, in the 21st century.

Doing this not only puts Monica Lewinsky into a less mythological perspective. It also puts all of the machinations that now go into politicking for your right to actually BE President long after you have been elected--Republican or Democrat--into a new, important, and ultimately saddening perspective. (The degree to which her very existence in the public mind is shown to be part of a desire of Clinton's powerful enemies to erase Nixon's legacy from the annals of history with the impeachment of a Democratic President is brilliant. That omen is ironically overshadowed, however, by the way he explains the uncontrollable political Frankenstein that was the Office of Independent Counsel. This evil genie, with its granted near absolute power, is what Clinton let out of the bottle; a bottle that, after Watergate, was thought never to be opened again. Without it, the reincarnation of the Salem witch trials with Kenneth Starr and the pornography of his reports would never have occurred.)

I happened to have picked up this book to read after reading Conason and Lyons' THE HUNTING OF THE PRESIDENT--something which truly must be read in tandem with this if one is to really understand the social forces that also took center stage in the Clinton drama, despite their desire to still remain hidden. As such I found the Clinton chapters of SHADOW a rehash of previously digested material. SHADOW nonetheless, with its detailed meticulous analyses of the weaknesses and foibles of Ford, Carter, Regan, Bush and Clinton, and how these weaknesses became debilitating through the sins of their Watergate predecessor Nixon, cuts to the quick of our social consciousness today.

It is so important, it seems, for the American public not to have a historical perspective on anything that happens in politics. As if the pretense that all of it has no precedence somehow makes it more real or important--or worse, justifies an often hypocritically manufactured moral outrage. (I'll never forget the rage Clinton-haters would express at the mere mentioning of Sally Hemmings [Thomas Jefferson's slave mistress], Judith Exner [one of Kennedy's mistresses] or the broken first marriages of Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich, seemingly defending their right to believe Bill and Monica had ushered in the seventh sign of the Book of Revelations with their original sin.) Woodward's SHADOW destroys any validity that way of thinking had, and redefines the desire to be willfully politically/historically ignorant (as if ignorance buys someone moral virtue) as anything but sane. The book has a way of revalidating the entire concept and discipline of psychology, and its ability to explain the source of today's events, as it gives new strength to the battle weary line of Santayana: "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

Anyone interested in a deeper perspective on the Clinton presidency, the presidency of both Bushes, and modern American culture would highly benefit from this powerful trinity: Michael Lind's UP FROM CONSERVATISM, Conason and Lyons' THE HUNTING OF THE PRESIDENT, and this book. Woodward's SHADOW is extraordinarily well written, tremendously informative, and, even with its inevitable biases both in favor of journalism as it is presently practiced (Consaon and Lyons are fortunately not so kind--particularly to the Washington Post) and against the possibility of a president after Nixon inspiring the kind of faith and hope that those like FDR and Kennedy did (though he is almost right, Conason, Lyons and Lind will explain clearly why it could have happened but would not be allowed in Clinton's case), Woodward's masterful writing and storytelling skills hide a multitude of sins. Highly recommended.

Chilton, Leaves something to be desired when it comes to explaining where things are located!

I'd rather use Haynes

This is the second repair manual that I purchased that covers the '66 to '77 Bronco, as well as others. The first was the Haynes Pick-ups & Broncos 1973 thru 1979, and I can say without a doubt that the Chiltons manual is far superior. However, it still tends to concentrate on the '78 and later Broncos. I have a '76, and while it gives relatively detailed instructions for the later models, it usually only gives vague instructions for the early trucks, or omits them altogether. It's a handy reference, but not sufficient for more involved work or restoration. Your best bet is still the factory service manual.

The cover on this book is beautiful and that is why I bought it. It certainly should increase sales. Most of the articles are, obviously, by people who grew up in Mississippi although the editors have stretched this point a bit to include some well known names and a diversity of backgrounds. Many of those included no longer live in the state, and what they have to say about growing up in Mississippi leaves much to be desired. And yes, I did grow up in Mississippi and no longer live in the state (which I regret) and I wasn't asked for MY story, but that is beside the point. It would have been nice to include more people who actually are now real Mississippians.

I purchased this book as reference for the current year. Poor choice. It does not have the changes for the last two years integrated into the text. If I was teaching a tax class I would use this book as my text. It is very complete and the exercises have very real world situations.

Ever wonder what simple changes add for hp? The specific impact runner length has on tq & hp? Like to see dyno tests while only changing to the various size TB or MAF? If so, this is the book. I was referred to this book and came away feeling I learned a lot. It does away with many of the myths. Has also become a great reference tool when considering certain changes.

p.s. After reading the book I doubt the author is trying to decieve the reader with the claim of 2000 dyno runs. I'll bet it was the real number of pulls it took to gather the data. I'm sure it involved multiple pulls per setup, per test not just one.

While I think this book has some good information, I think anyone who regularly reads Muscle Mustang and Fast Fords will have read most of this already. It states there are 2000 dyno runs, I counted, and came up with around 180. While this is a lot, most of this was already in MM & FF magazine. They didn't even test a vortech/paxton centrifugal supercharger on a stock engine. They did this test for a Kenne Bell, but it would be a great comparison to test the KB against a centrifugal supercharger. Overall, I am dissapointed, I think most of this is regurgitated material.

While I think this book has some good information, I think anyone who regularly reads Muscle Mustang and Fast Fords will have read most of this already. It states there are 2000 dyno runs, I counted, and came up with around 180. While this is a lot, most of this was already in MM & FF magazine. They didn't even test a vortech/paxton centrifugal supercharger on a stock engine. They did this test for a Kenne Bell, but it would be a great comparison to test the KB against a centrifugal supercharger. Overall, I am dissapointed, I think most of this is regurgitated material.

I am a Mustang enthusiast who was sorely disappointed with this book. While this book provides dyno evidence for most enthusiasts¡¯ anecdotal knowledge, it misses important tests of the standard equipment and combinations that most gear heads want to know about.

For instance, in the section which compares cams on a typical street/strip 5.0 setup w/ extrude honed Dart Iron heads, ported Cobra intake, and long tube headers, the dyno results purport to compare 8 different cams. However, in reality, the cams tested were only from three different companies: Ford Motorsport, Lunati and Crane. Additionally, the cams were not really selected for optimal use with that particular combination. A more valid test would have compared similar cam grinds among 8 different companies.

The intake section has similar shortcomings as well. The dyno results of many tests that most reasonably knowledgeable mustangers don't really care for are reported in great detail. Many comparisons are made between OEM and slightly modified OEM components vs. FRPP/SVO components. There is absolutely no comparison among the different aftermarket intake manufacturers represented here. Although there are comparisons of ported vs. unported cobra/GT40 style intakes and extrude hones OEM intakes reported here, this information is only useful to the novice who is looking to get his/her feet wet.

The supercharger and exhaust modification sections are better, but lack key dyno comparisons as well. I give credit to Richard Holdener for compiling such a comprehensive array of cheap and/or free modifications for the novice to try, but most enthusiasts would have tried these modifications already. The layout of the book is very easy to read, well organized and very well written. But, in my estimation, it is a book most suited for the novice seeking optimization of stock or SVO/FRPP components. This book is not for the gear head that knows which combo they want to run, but is seeking hard evidence from the dyno to make a particular component or brand choice.

Peace