MACMANUS, Theodore; BEASLEY, Norman. Men, Money and Motors: The Drama of the Automobile. New York and London: Harper & Brothers. 1929. 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s maroon boards lettered in gilt to the spine and upper board, in the striking art deco three-tier design dust jacket, signed ‘P M’. A very well-preserved copy. The boards with a few unobtrusive marks, but sharp and bright, the binding tight and just a trifle rolled. The contents clean and fine throughout without stamps, inscriptions, or foxing. The dust jacket unclipped ($3.00), several tiny chips and nicks to extremities, some tiny closed tears, but sharp overall.
A high-octane, romantic portrait of the first twenty five years or so of the American automobile industry. Told factually though with great drama—MacManus was the great automotive adman of the time, coining many of the big players’ famous taglines, despite never actually learning to drive—it’s a thrilling insight into the ‘rugged picturesqueness to those pursuers of fortunes’ with ‘a tang and flavour of piracy’. The Dodge Brothers, Henry Ford, Nash, Erskine, Jordan, Lewis, Durant, Chrysler, and many, many others appear, and often it is not automobiles as transport that is celebrated, but plain old American business. ‘Business then, as now, was business – not the salvation of the soul nor the saving of the body politic. Those men were frost-bitten, ugly at times, rough-tongued, and heavy-fisted. Age has made them – some of them – philosophical; in youth they were on fire. Hard and heroic they were but human, always.’ Uncommon in such sharp condition.
MACMANUS, Theodore; BEASLEY, Norman. Men, Money and Motors: The Drama of the Automobile. New York and London: Harper & Brothers. 1929. 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s maroon boards lettered in gilt to the spine and upper board, in the striking art deco three-tier design dust jacket, signed ‘P M’. A very well-preserved copy. The boards with a few unobtrusive marks, but sharp and bright, the binding tight and just a trifle rolled. The contents clean and fine throughout without stamps, inscriptions, or foxing. The dust jacket unclipped ($3.00), several tiny chips and nicks to extremities, some tiny closed tears, but sharp overall.
A high-octane, romantic portrait of the first twenty five years or so of the American automobile industry. Told factually though with great drama—MacManus was the great automotive adman of the time, coining many of the big players’ famous taglines, despite never actually learning to drive—it’s a thrilling insight into the ‘rugged picturesqueness to those pursuers of fortunes’ with ‘a tang and flavour of piracy’. The Dodge Brothers, Henry Ford, Nash, Erskine, Jordan, Lewis, Durant, Chrysler, and many, many others appear, and often it is not automobiles as transport that is celebrated, but plain old American business. ‘Business then, as now, was business – not the salvation of the soul nor the saving of the body politic. Those men were frost-bitten, ugly at times, rough-tongued, and heavy-fisted. Age has made them – some of them – philosophical; in youth they were on fire. Hard and heroic they were but human, always.’ Uncommon in such sharp condition.
