Airstream The History of the Land Yacht

Airstream The History of the Land Yacht

Adventure is where you find it any place, every place, except at home in the rocking chair. Wally Byam, creator of the Airstream

User Ratings and Reviews

2 Stars Verbose!

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.

4 Stars A Fun Pictorial History for Airstream Aficionados
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.

4 Stars Airstream Land Yacht - History of the Airstream
Nice book on the history of the Land Yacht and the many global travels of airstream owners. Very few interior photos, so probably not the book for restorations but more to put in the rack once your restoration is complete. For interior photos, a more reliable source is www.vintageairstream.com Enjoy the book. We are.

3 Stars Good, just not as expected
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.

3 Stars Not What I Expected, Either!
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.

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