Edward L. Peterson

This is a nonfiction pictorial history, the first of its kind I've ever seen, about the evolution of the fire chief vehicle. From horse and buggy, to horseless carriage, to what we see today, this book takes us through this drastic evolution with a chapter for each decade. The pictures (594 black and white, 36 color) were well-chosen to provide the best examples from each decade. It also includes many pictures of advertisements, postcards, and toys connected to fire chief vehicles.

Some of my favorite fun automotive facts through the decades from this book:

"Ford Motor Co. had built over half of the automobiles in the world by 1919."

"Locomobile, Moon, Cole, Jordan, Stutz, and Marmon are a few of the 181 manufacturers in 1922 that vanished or were "near death" by the end of 1929."

"The two-millionth Plymouth was built in 1937."

"[in the 1940's] smaller community police departments would share or "hand-me-down" cars to the fire departments."

Since the book was nearly all pictures, I thought it would be a breeze to read, but it took much longer to get through than I thought... it had me so interested in each picture and caption, that I simply couldn't skim through! I especially liked the fact that the book included many old ads from magazines and papers advertising certain fire apparatus and so forth seen in the pictures. They gave the reader a deeper understanding of the big picture. The pictures were perfectly chosen to illustrate the evolution over each time period, from 1900 to 1999, across the United States (and even Canada). A big FIVE STARS!… (more)