Books to stay away from

[A4K]

There are a few books with that problem unfortunately. A common mistake is misnaming aircraft/ tanks.
Kinda funny (but also annoying) to look at a photo of, say a Dauntless, with a caption reading 'An Avenger takes off from...'. How many people do these books put crook I wonder?

 

[Oreo]

Yes, I know. Not an aviation book, but one of the worst books I have EVER seen for typos, bad captions, and "miss-the-point" bloopers, is "Endless Tracks in the Woods" by Jerry L. Budy and a second author I can't remember the name of. Now, the book if full of beautiful b+w photos documenting the logging days of 1900-1960 or so, but the authors and editors got it SO wrong throughout the book it isn't even funny. It would be almost like writing a book without doing any research, or doing just enough to get you in trouble. And the typos are worse than anybody's thread posts I have seen on this forum, I think. . . . . It's one thing to have typos while nodding off to sleep and writing on an on-line forum, but this book actually got published!

 

[A4K]

Agree completely. Wonder if editors leave their work to 'spell check' these days - some books Ive read are full of typos and double phrases!
What is possibly worse is how badly many newspaper articles are written now. Full of mistakes and very amateur sentence structures. I swear a 14 year old could write better articles than some I've read.

 

[Lucky13]

Doubt it mate, it would be written in SMS or text style!
Imagine that, a whole book written in l8r, u 2 etc., etc...

 

[A4K]

Take up less space on the shelf!

 

[Capt. Vick]

Burt Rutan: Reinventing the Airplane by Vera Foster Rollo... Proof that given unlimited amounts of time, monkey's and type-writers, a readable book will eventually be written…but just barely!

The Wild Blue : The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s Over Germany 1944-45 by Stephen E. Ambrose… Don't let the title fool you, this is really a partial, and boring, biography of George McGovern's war years. The only book I ever took back AFTER I read!

 

[parsifal]

William Greens books on WWIi aircraft. to be fair, he does have some useful information, but there are huge errors as well, and the trouble is, you just dont know when hes right and when hes wronng

 

[oldcrowcv63]

There are a few books with that problem unfortunately. A common mistake is misnaming aircraft/ tanks.
Kinda funny (but also annoying) to look at a photo of, say a Dauntless, with a caption reading 'An Avenger takes off from...'. How many people do these books put crook I wonder?

It's annoying when such a misidentification is found in a book. I was shocked to find one such mis-captioned photo on the wall of a building at the Naval War College in Newport, RI. As I recall, the photo showed a Dauntless misidentified as a Hellcat.

 

[Milosh]

It's annoying when such a misidentification is found in a book. I was shocked to find one such mis-captioned photo on the wall of a building at the Naval War College in Newport, RI. As I recall, the photo showed a Dauntless misidentified as a Hellcat.

Now that is really funny. Hope you mentioned the error to someone.

W. Green's books (Famous Fighters, and Famous Bombers, of WW2) were first published in the '50s.

 

[MiTasol]

I started to read one recently - cant remember the name or author of it - but it called the T-6 the Texas instead of Texan multiple times on the first page. If I come across it again I will provide the name and author

 

[Graeme]

Saw this one in a new book the other day. The text is fine, the specs are fine and the little angled photo of the Fw-190 add to the entry and all make sense..
...but the Nieuport? Go figure.

 

[parsifal]

In the realm of board games, some of the worst are "to the greenfields and beyond" (a game about the battle of the marne) , Avalon Hills "Fall Of France", and GDWs half finished but still published "Pearl Harbour - the war against japan" are in there as the worst in my book

 

[drgondog]

Interesting, I read Fire in the Sky and found it to be exceptionally well developed historically - even with the odd mistakes regarding aircraft terms and, in some cases, types.

As to editors - by my current count Schiffer ignored about 30 typos and table corrections on my final Proof - not all but a significant %, demonstrating that someone got bored during the final review of Our Might Always - History of the 355th FG WWII

Steve Blake reported similar behavior on his Pioneer Mustangs - History of the 354th FG

 

[CharlesBronson]

The Osprey serie regarding aviation is sadly ones of the worst , and I say sadly because the presentation and format is very good, but for example the osprey Air war in the Falklands was so full of mistakes that let me in shock....Then I started to look with suspicion the other ones on tanks, armor, armies, etc.

 

[Capt. Vick]

Once got a pamphlet from the Smithsonian NASM that had a picture of a B-17 labeled as a B-24, or visa-versa.

 

[Catch22]

Once got a pamphlet from the Smithsonian NASM that had a picture of a B-17 labeled as a B-24, or visa-versa.

Unfortunately that happens, as that pamphlet wouldn't have been actually made and laid out in house. The text would have been written by the Smithsonian, but all it takes is one person missing something during the proof reading and that's what you get.

 

[Airframes]

And often, images are laterally reversed, quite often deliberately, but more often due to lack of knowledge.
An example of deliberate reversal is where the designer wants a heading photo, with the aircraft diving in from the left, on the left hand page.
A photo of, say, a Spitfire in level flight, flying from right to left, is then reversed and angled, to show it diving from left to right. Annoying enough when the markings can't be seen, but worse when letters read backwards, as in a mirror !!

 

[Capt. Vick]

Oh, I remembered another. The early Schiffer books that were laid out like the Squadron Signal In Action books. (I think they were rebanded budget German publications) Many pictures miss labeled and at least 1 photo printed upside down!

 

[pinehilljoe]

Anything by Keegan, I think he should fire his editors and fact checkers.

 

[Capt. Vick]

Another book that lured me in with the title and publishing entity (SAE Society of Automotive Engineers of which I was once a member) was LOST FIGHTERS: A HISTORY OF U.S. JET FIGHTER PROGRAMS THAT DIDN'T MAKE IT by William Holder. Mislabeled photos, wrong information and basic text make this a sophomore effort on Mr. Holders part. Avoid.