The new cover is lame! the old cover was an illustration of two heinkels taken from the original paperback cover from the sixties. This new one pictures some blurry stock art motorcycle (not even a scooter, let alone the *right* scooter) and some sort of renaissance-looking map with a teardrop camper, obviously the designer didn’t read the book or do any research at all, or there was some sort of testing that says blurry photos and renaissance maps sell books. They need a submarine and an astrolabe, and a swastika or a sickle and hammer on there, and maybe a shirtless Fabio, just to make it look a little more generic.

The spot illustrations on the chapter intro pages were terrific, they better have kept those in place!

I forgot a whole category of books, the “ride safe” book. These are probably the best gift you could give to any rider. My favorites are David L. Hough’s Proficient Motorcycling and More Proficient Motorcycling, at least the first is essential reading, and the second one sure can’t hurt. Other books in this vein that I haven’t checked out yet, but highly recommended by others include The Motorcycle Safety Foundation’s Guide to Motorcycling Excellence and Hough’s newest, Street Strategies.

Another “genre” I forgot is the many books about the history of Vespa published by Piaggio. These are probably the glossiest and most expensive books out there, and any Vespa fan should own one, but they seem to be publishing a new version every couple years and most contain the same photos and information, mostly a corporate history of Piaggio glossed over annually by the Piaggio PR department. Good stuff, but like I said, only one is necessary. I’d love to see an outsider-written history of the rise of the Vespa with more first-person accounts and interviews and details, and the history of the many failures of Piaggio in the U.S. would be great summer beach reading for me, but again, people like me are a pretty limited audience.

Piaggio’s Vespa Technica series, released for their 50th anniversary, are a great reference resource and feature detailed pictures and specifications of every model produced, but the 5-part series costs $100 per volume. If you’ve got that much money to throw around on books, you could probably just refer to the concours restorations of every Vespa model already on display in your heated garage.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1933572078/

I just put it in my cart. Thanks!