Airstream: The History of the Land Yacht | 
|  | | | Title: | Airstream: The History of the Land Yacht | | Author: | Bryan Burkhart
David Hunt | | Publisher: | Chronicle Books | | Type: | Book / Paperback | | Publication Date: | 01 February, 2000 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 0811824713 / 9780811824712 | | List Price: | $19.95 | | You Save: | $6.38 | | Amazon Price: | $13.57 | |
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| Editorial Review / Publisher's Information:
Product Description
Sleek and shiny, Airstream trailers have been turning heads on the highways since they first started caravanning across America in the 1930s. These "aluminum skinned, gleaming silver bullets" are currently enjoying a revival in popularity. Praised for their clean lines and timeless aesthetic, movie stars and design buffs are snapping up these vintage beauties. Airstream equal parts travelogue, cultural history, and biography of Wally Byam, Airstream's charismatic inventor celebrates the trailer's enduring appeal as an icon of simple, aerodynamic living. A dazzling array of images tell the story of how Byam, the father of modern trailer travel, created less a product than an entire culture. From the Eiffel Tower to the pyramids of Giza, from the Acropolis to the Golden Gate Bridge, Airstream caravans continue to travel to the far reaches of the earth. Amazing photographs from the Airstream archives document this metallic nomad's significant place in the history of design, from its streamlined origins to its current vogue. Airstream has always been synonymous with the freedom of the open road. Today the dream lives on.
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Customer Reviews:
• Not What I Expected, Either! 11 December, 2000
Though never having owned an Airstream, I've always been interested in its development and history as the 'Cadillac' of travel trailers. This book was, for the most part, a disappointment. I was primarily interested in the trailers themselves. There are very few illustrations of floor plans over the years, of the development of the interiors and exteriors--after all, today's trailers are quite different from 40 years ago! A great deal of space is dedicated to a few Wally Byam caravans with some large, page-filling photos. In the end, this can make a nice coffee-table book for Airstream fans. I'd still like to see a more comprehensive research into the trailers themselves and their development.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3HRBWBN7DH9XV
• Good, Just Not As Expected 26 January, 2004
While this book offers much for those interested in the people behind Airstream, it offers little about the trailers themselves. Still, a good and interesting read.
- Reviewed by customer ID: APALI4USSEDJS
• A Fun Pictorial History For Airstream Aficionados 17 January, 2007
Probably the only mid-20th century vehicle design that can compete with the beloved Volkswagen Beetle is the classic Airstream trailer. It seems to be the testosterone-oriented vehicle of choice for current Hollywood stars like Tom Hanks and Matthew McConaughey. The timeless appeal is clear from its clean, cocoon-like design and the promise of a mobile self-contained world. Airstream enthusiasts Bryan Burkhart and David Hunt have compiled a pleasing, soft-cover coffee-table book that looks almost reverentially at the birth of this unique vehicle and how it attracted its devoted following, as well as a pictorially rich history of international caravan adventures that showed off the communal spirit of its owners. The pivotal figure in the book is Airstream founder Wally Byam, an ad man who started his business in the late 1920's with "how-to" kits which allowed people to build their own trailers.
The familiar loaf-shaped, silver-aluminum design was not introduced until 1936, and production has since remained uninterrupted. Fittingly, Byam was an adventurous eccentric who had a keen if indiscriminate sense of publicity. What is most striking in the book is the fanatical following he developed between the 1950's and the 1970's when uniform convoys of Airstreams would be found in far-flung locales such as the Great Pyramids of Egypt, Mont St. Michel in France and a pygmy village in Uganda. Leading the masses in evangelical mode with his distinctive pith helmet, Byam met with leading political figures of the day, often notorious ones like Selassie and Batista who became enamored with the clean design. The co-authors have gathered a fascinating gallery of vintage photographs of these cavalcades, the most impressive showing the hundreds of trailers parked in perfect formation in concentric circles. You don't have to own an Airstream trailer to enjoy this book, as you can be like me and fantasize what the open road could be like in one of these Art Deco-styled wonders.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A13E0ARAXI6KJW
• Verbose! 12 January, 2008
This book contains an interesting and plentiful assortment of photos and illustrations, but it is a drag to read. It is verbose and frequently veers off course to matters only loosely connected to Airstream's history. And the storyline jumps around and virtually disappears, time after time, into thickets of fluff. Overall I found it took unusual effort to find the wheat amidst the chaff in this book, and to follow the often sketchy, weaving trail of the story. Were I not so interested in Airstreams, I would not have finished it. I recommend it only to those likewise enamored.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1A1AS4LSNMN2G
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