Tear Drops and Tiny Trailers by Douglas Keister (2008, Hardcover)

This book is awesome, It holds a lot of information, many pictures and great to read. Buy it now go and buy it.worth the money.

When I was made aware of this book, the title and the few pages I was able to view via another website as a preview peaked my interest, so I seeked it out and purchased a copy. I was REALLY looking forward to getting it in the mail, as I own other books Keister has had a hand in writing and have loved greatly.
To much dismay, I was not as impressed as I had thought I would be. In fact I was surprised to see Keister put out a book so out of whack!

To begin with, there is almost no time line to the book.
It has very little to show and talk about in regards to early small trailers of the teens, 20s-30s. As if there was little to no travelling being done then, which is wrong, as anyone that has the gumption to research that very info for themselves will find. Hence, a very small amount of information, photos, etc. deaing with those time periods. The author even knows this but fails to exemplify this much at all!
There is a lot of info that this book is drastically LACKING!

Instead, the author eases into the fact that there are many more examples out there of late 40s to the late 1960s and decidedly focuses on those instead.

The author does not chonologically go from the earliest trailers to the latest. Instead he swerves like a drunken driver back and forth, then all over the map, giving you photos of four trailers with their beautiful period tow cars, then decides, (for hwatever reason!) that a completely modernized trailer, with a horrible looking street rod with chromed out wheels and a paintjob that looks as if several paint cans had exploded in the garage somehow fits within that same collection of photos from the 1930s?? This happens all over the book, sticking things that don't belong with one another. In fact, it throws you for a loop, as at the end, suddenly, there is a collection of photos explaining horse drawn "gypsie" wagons! Its a whirling zig-zag of photos, and info. Hardly what I was expecting!

I found I had wasted every penny on a book that had almost no cohesion from one page to the next. It seems as though this was put together for the sole reason to simply generate some more money for the author, and not give the reader much for his or her purchase?

There are many other far better produced pieces of literature out there for the travel trailer enthusiast and those just looking for a book dealing with the curiosities of travel trailers.

Some of which are:

"Trailer Travel" by Phil Noyes, Bryan Burkhart, and Allison Arieff

"Ready to Roll" by Arrol Gellner and Douglas Keister
*(yes strange that this is such a better book as Keister had his hand in it?)

"RVs & Campers: 1900-2000" (An Illustrated History) by Donald Wood

"Mullins Red Cap Utility Trailer" by Robert L. Parmelee