I first found this book in the library, and after returning it three weeks later, I was drawn back to check it out again. This is the only book of its kind, and made me want to immediately take a vacation--whether in an electric car or not! Perrin's journey takes him across America with Solo, his converted Ford Escort wagon, and he writes about a good portion of American culture, right down to his thrill to spend only $21 for a night in a hotel in Utah. He writes about all the questions posed him, the curiosities that were too irresistible to pass up, such as how expensive are the solar panels, what is the car's range, is it expensive to convert a regular car, and so on. Although Perrin's book is already over eight years old (and I was saddened to see that it is out of print), it is clear there has been some progress since the electric cars that basically had only one power source that was cheap, reliable and had a reasonable life expectancy, albeit a dangerous one: lead-acid batteries. I would feel uncomfortable sitting on top of (or near) 800 pounds of sulfuric acid. Solo has a limited range, only 150 miles a day and can only get up to about 65 MPH. The drawbacks come when accessories must be used: heater, lights, and defogger. I wouldn't have the patience to drive such a car, but maybe driving such a car would teach me patience.

I loved this book! Perrin makes nonfiction as literature an art, and breathes new life into travel writing. His book is very helpful in itself about a good, consistent writing style, and I love it when the writer takes me to the places he visits: sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and so on. In that sense, "Life With an Electric Car" has no equal yet, and the author knows it. If you can find this book, buy it and keep it. Perrin's book is like a good drink that is sipped, not gulped down. Read it slowly. You may begin to think that the days of gasoline powered cars are numbered. That they are. Highly recommended for readers 14 and over.

Noel Perrin is a professor of environmental studies at Dartmouth College. He had a moment of enlightenment when a student asked him how he traveled the thirteen miles to class that morning. "I drove in, in my gas-guzzling, air polluting farm truck," he admitted. Then began his quest to find a vehicle more consistent with his beliefs and his profession. He acquired Solo, a Ford Escort converted into a battery-powered, solar-panel-assisted electric car with a range of nearly sixty miles (on level ground on a warm day).

Perrin's adventures with Solo are in the best tradition of the "travelin' across America" genre. We share his frustration as he realizes that he can't make it up and over Donner Pass, and abandons his coast-to-coast drive to bring Solo home from California. (He buys a pickup truck to tow "him" - Solo is male.) We watch his chagrin as he realizes that his new truck/car caravan can't back up - not even a few feet - and he has to select motels, restaurants, and gas stops based on the shape of their parking spaces. We worry with him the first time he drives after dark; how fast will his headlights drain the batteries? Back at home, we cheer as the college gives him his own personal outlet next to a reserved parking space.

Perrin's attention to detail adds to the pleasure. He doesn't just state Solo's mileage range and charging time; he spells out the cost in time, worry, and inconvenience. School is thirteen miles away, and he can recharge the car during classes. His wife has her own separate home forty-six miles away - a little too far for comfort, especially with hills and cold weather making extra demands on his seventeen batteries. Perrin gives a detailed analysis of the "cradle-to-grave" pollution costs of owning Solo vs. owning a gasoline-powered car. He contends that Solo costs society virtually nothing - especially since he started to recharge "him" from a series of solar panels.

Three chapters have been added to the expanded paperback edition. These bring us up to date on the latest in electric vehicle technology and the evolution of the field.

This is a most enjoyable and informative book. It left me with a rather surprising urge to rush right out and buy an electric car!

This book is filled to the brim with hundreds of pages of plastic ware from the 30s to the 60s. Goldberg gives us photos of everything from plastic toothpicks to appliances. He includes everything you can think of: barware, bowls, canisters, cookie jars, clocks, containers, flatware, glasses & tumblers, napkin rings, picnic items, refridgerator dishes, salt & pepper sets, utensils, even watering cans!

There is a large section which covers dinnerware, with over 25 different manufacturers, including a nice section showing various backstamps. He includes a bilbliography, value guide (which may not reflect current online auctions prices), and a short history of plastic as it was introduced to America. My only quibble with this book is that I wish the photos were a little better lit, they are a little dark in some sections. But all in all, a valuable reference.

Elegant and well-written, this is one of the few books to take a realistic look at American popular cultural technology. Historians and archaeologists coupld learn a lot from this case study.

This book starts out with a history of how Americans became mobile and the choices we made with respect to bicycles, mass transit and cars. It then goes into modest detail about the development of power generating stations needed to support electric cars and into great detail about the development of electric cars and how they fit into U.S. society. Development of gas cars is covered in depth only to compare the technologies and illustrate the choices we made. By reading this, you know a great deal about transportation technology and the society that developed it. The last chapter is all about the present and near term future of electric cars. The book offers an excellent depiction of how we have become the mobile society (or mobile mess?) that we became. Recommended for history buffs and especially for electric car enthusiasts.

It's ok, good pictures, but.....there is a better book out there and it's half the price. This is not a complete book of it but a good base to start for information.

I though the pictures in this book were outstanding. The text that goes with them is somewhat brief however, and I would not recomend this particular book unless you have a solid base knowledge of SS Uniforms in general. It expects you to know the basics. But if you are farmiliar with SS Uniforms, then by all means this is a highly recomended addition to your collection.

If you love this stuff, this book is a must.

Maury!

Blondidog@hotmail.com

This book is just flat out amazing. I read it every night, and that's a lot of reading (272 pages a night). Anyways, trust me, it talks about cars that are developing, such as electric and nitrogen...Peace out fools

this is the most exciting and interest book i have ever read on cars. I have found out so much information on cars of the future it is amazing. Jim Motavalli does a great job of explaining how these cars will work to the average person who doesnt know alot about cars.

"Forward drive" is a pleasure to read, written by Jim Motavalli, who is well-versed in his subjects. Reading this book is one of the few things today that makes me feel like I'm actually in the 21st century, not stuck in the 90's and never progressing. The book has a wealth of information not found in any other book, and there are only a few books about the future of automobiles. I had no idea that big automakers were not really in a hurry to give us a truly revolutionary car with a new power source; it seems the profit margin was less for holding off in research and development because of some link with oil companies. I mean, come on, it's the year 2001! Where are all the cars like we saw in Bladerunner? Are we still stuck using twenty-miles to the gallon gasoline internal-combustion engines? What is the message from automakers when cars depicted in video games, for example, seem more real than the actual future? Why isn't there yet a car that is beyond what we have?

The book discusses much needed information about "the race" to build cleaner cars, and that a car with no emissions--a technological difficulty in itself--is actually possible. The questions of fuel efficiency, speed, power and appeal of futuristic cars are also addressed, indicating the knowledgeability of the author. Key among the topics of "Forward Drive" is affordability. I would not pay $100,000 to drive a non-polluting car, simply because I'm not willing to pay that much just to drive.

Motavalli, editor of "E:" magazine, clearly shows his love for the craft of writing nonfiction. "Forward drive" cannot be fully absorbed in only a skimming or a preview; it takes a dedicated block of time to actually read its pages carefully. I have found it very helpful as a reference in the book that I am writing. This book is one of those you don't want to bring to the second-hand store if you have any concern at all about the future--which is actually right now. Highly recommended for intelligent minds. It's about time we have some new information about something that affects the majority of Americans: driving. Buy "Forward drive," you won't be disappointed.

GURPS Alternate Earths may be made to order for a dimension hopping campaign such as GURPS Time Travel, but I believe it also gives gamers an opportunity to see how our own world "might have been" if just one event in history was changed. And it provides opportunities to set whole adventures, and even whole campaigns in those worlds.

The six different "Earths" in this book are almost textbook examples of the now popular "What If" line of SF stories. The first world, "Dixie", gives us a good idea as to what might have happened if the South had won the American Civil War. It covers the time from secession to the time when the Confederate States of America became a superpower. The second world, "Reich 5" give us a chilling look at the world under Nazi rule and the resistance effort still under way years later. The third world "Rome Aeterna", assumes the Roman empire never fell. The fourth world, "Shikaku-Mon", assumes the ancient Japanese Empire conquered the world. The fifth world, "Ezcalli", has details for a strange Earth where the might of the Aztecs, Incas, and Mayans is unsurpassed. The sixth and final world is the strangest of all. "Gernsback" starts with a simple postulation: what if Nikolai Tesla's inventions worked and were used by someone with the financial genius of Morgan? Flying cars and broadcast power are common.

There are ideas for adventures, characters, and even whole campaigns for each of the worlds, including several paragraphs about even stranger worlds that diverged from these six. These "reality seeds" give creative GM's even more alternate worlds to explore.

People wishing to use books like Harry Turtledove's wonderful alternate earths books need look no further for ideas of how to recreate his books for a strange parallel world campaign. Highly recommended for GURPS GM's and recommended even to SF fans wanting to explore the ramifications of what might happen if...

It doesn't matter if you have no intention of ever role playing or if you have no idea what GURPS is about, this is a fascinating book for anyone who, like me, wants to see more of an alternate history than the point of divergence and a sporadic description of the world spread out across the course of a book.

This book holds the background information for six alternate histories, each at different points in their timelines. In each section you'll find maps, histories and descriptions for each of the major powers involved in that world along with sidebars that cover some small details of those worlds (rock & roll in the Confederate States of America? It's in there. How to tour in Gernsback? Yep). These are not stories, these are the actual histories involved.

If you're not interested in the gaming aspect, then the tables and charts referring to character types and the likes will be of minor interest, but don't let that stop you.

This is a rare time when I wish that Steve Jackson Games had a fiction line to explore each of these scenarios...

This guy must do nothing but read and write. I'm not even sure he takes time to eat. He knows more and more obscure facts about the history of our planet than anyone I've ever met.

Whatever the case, though, I'm grateful, because he's come up with some pretty terrific rpg sourcebooks. This is one of them.

This book offers six alternate Earths, each an imagined world in which something is different from the world we know. Some are set in a past in which something is different; others in a present in which something in the past went a different way.

Such settings make for great fiction--and for great adventures. It's not hard to come up with ideas for such settings, but it is nice when someone's taken the trouble to do the development work for you. A modern Confederate America, an ancient Roman campaign in the New World. Wonderful!

The book can also help you design your own alternate earths by example.

This book is definitely worth checking out if you're looking for a new and different setting for your campaign. If you're done with high fantasy, but you still want magic; if you like metropolises but long for a radically different social structer; if you have any interest in things NOT as they are, then this book's for you.

This book is a great read for all archaeologists. Schiffer has micro-analyzed many of the disturbances which can occur in the archaeological record. While in practice it will be impossible to account or discern all that he outlines here, it is very important to read this book no matter if you are in the US or not, or at least parts, so as to be informed as to what can happen - and how assumptions can be mistaken and have grave effects on archaeological interpretation. PS. Schiffer is a processualist, so that may give you an indication of his mentality.

Schiffer's ability to explain the complexity of formation processes is unrivaled. If you aren't sure how archaeologists know what they know about a site, you need to read this book.

GURPS Alternate Earths 2 may be made to order for a dimension hopping campaign such as GURPS Time Travel, but I believe it also gives gamers another opportunity to see how our own world "might have been" if just one event in history was changed. And it provides more opportunities to set whole adventures, and even whole campaigns in those worlds.

The six different "Earths" in this book are more examples of the now popular "What If" line of SF stories. The first world, "Cornwallis", give us a good idea as to what might have happened if the British had won the American War for Independence. The second world, "Ming 3" gives us a look at a world under the Chinese Dynasty. The third world, "Midgard", assumes the Viking fury caught fire and captured most of the known world. The fourth world, "Caliph", assumes the Muslim faith converted the world. The fifth world, "Aeolus", has details for a strange Earth where the might of the English and French monarchs is unsurpassed.

The final world is the "opposite" of the one in GURPS Time Travel. Fans of that game have wanted to see "Centrum" for a long time, and this supplement does not disappoint. The overwhelming thought on Centrum is "The Ends Justify The Means" and all the possible terror that this political theory causes. Although the book also gives an opportunity to make Centrum a nicer place, GM's for GURPS Time Travel will welcome the chance to design NPC's that will be a thorn in the players sides for adventure after adventure.

There are even more ideas for adventures, characters, and even whole campaigns for each of the worlds, including several paragraphs about more strange worlds that diverged from these six again. These "reality seeds" give creative GM's even more alternate worlds to explore.

People wishing to use books like Mike Resnick's wonderful alternate series need look no further for ideas of how to recreate those books for a parallel worlds campaign. Highly recommended for GURPS GM's and recommended even to SF fans wanting to explore the ramifications of what might happen if...

After the fun GURPS Alternate Earths 1, Steve Jackson Games publishes another volume with six different alternate histories: Worlds that resemble Earth, but whose history diverge from our own after a certain point in time. This time, it includes the following:

- Midgard, a world where the Vikings successfully plundered Byzantium, and went on to build successful colonies in North America and elsewhere.

- Caliph, an Islam-dominated world where the early invention of the moveable type printing press allowed an early scientific revolution, and in which several other solar systems are being colonized - but Earth itselfs is on the brink of a global war after centuries of peace.

- Cornwallis, a world where the American revolution never happened. Now the corrupt monarchies of Europe and revolutionary Russia face each other and wait for the first shot to start a world war.

Each alternate history gets about twenty pages. This is sufficient to get a good general impression of the world, but I often wished that this world had been made into w sourcebook of its own...

The alternate histories are all fairly logical, and suspending one's sense of disbelief isn't difficult. In my opinion, they are even better than the ones in GURPS Alternate Earth 1 - some of the worlds in there (especially Reich-5 and Dixie) were too stereotyped for my taste (though still well executed).

There is something in this book for most gamers. Do you want a fantasy world? Use Midgard and change it slightly to make it more magical? Do you want an innovative SF background? Use Caliph. Do you want to play a fighter for freedom and democracy? Play in Europe of Aeolus and fight the evil Hapsburg empire...

This is a well researched and illustrated book. A very worthy study of Canadian and other Commonwealth aircrew insignia. The author obviously has a wide experience in researching and collecting in the subject and the coverage of particularly Canadian insignia is excellent. As an Australian, I found the treatment of Australian aircrew badges is very good as he consulted appropriate Australian museum authorities. The only criticisms I have are minor. In dealing with naval aircrew insignia, the author gives the impression of not understanding the rather complex British wartime treatment of 'temporary' naval personnel - they were enrolled in the Naval Volunteer Reserve, with different rank lacing on uniforms to regular officers e.g. 'wavy' stripes as opposed to straight stripes on the uniform sleeve. As almost all Commwealth navy aircrew were temporaries, they wore the wavy stripes. Although illustrations of these appear in the book, this explanation is not given. The other, more humorous (hardly a criticism) is the illustration of first world war Royal Naval Air Service Flight Lieutenant E. Stoneman on page 45, in his uniform, together with a lady who looks very much like his mother (or a close relative as facial features are similar). She, of course is dressed in female attire of the time. Our ever exact author specifically identifies the Lieutenant as the person standing on the left of the photograph! As I said, very minor criticisms. A very good book on the subject