A visually engrossing, thorough history of how Lionel trains came into being and ruled the toy world.
An illustrated history of a legendary American toy.
Carp, who served as senior editor at Classic Toy Trains magazine for 20 years, here combines narrative with dozens of photos to tell the history and surprising social impact of the iconic Lionel Train sets that thousands of Americans young and old enjoyed for decades, particularly at the peak of their popularity in the latter half of the 20th century. Carp traces the origins of the line, providing running biographical accounts of the men and women who worked behind the scenes to design both the trains and their elaborate settings, with their miniature houses and scenery and control towers. He introduces people like craftsmen Robert Sherman and Arthur Zirul, “wizards at envisioning entire settings for Lionel trains.” Through text and photos, Carp illustrates the birth and growth of a popular toy idea, describing everything from the design specifics that would allow longer and more complex trains to maneuver on straight tracks and curves to the all-important marketing campaigns that made the latest Lionel train model every year’s must-have Christmas present. He presents all this in the form of a series of mini essays on various aspects of the Lionel story, and he fills these vignettes with the perfect blend of expert knowledge and fan enthusiasm. Doubtless many of his readers had Lionel trains in their childhood, maybe doted over the details or eagerly sought out some hard-to-find item, and those readers will be completely captivated by this train ride down Memory Lane, here invaluably assisted by all the photos Carp has included, which are of course the book’s most prominent asset. But the quiet wonder of the book is its accessibility. Even readers who’d never before heard of Lionel trains will likely find themselves caught up in the story of how these train sets so captured a part of the zeitgeist.
A visually engrossing, thorough history of how Lionel trains came into being and ruled the toy world.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781933600079
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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