Book Review: "Fins" - About Harley Earl

A couple of months ago on a whim I bought the book "Fins: Harley Earl, the Rise of General Motors, and the Glory Days of Detroit" by William Knoedelseder (Amazon link here).

I see that it got a number of five-star reviews on its Amazon page.  I am more inclined to put it somewhere in the three-star range.

What I found most interesting were details of Earl's family background, youth, and his adult personal life.  Some of the quotations from GM Art & Colour stylists were new to me, so that was useful.

Otherwise, I found too much padding on its 277 pages.  The author doubtless justified writing about outside events in order to provide context to the subject of Earl and automobile styling.  Nothing wrong with that in principle.  Nevertheless, there was too much of that for my taste.  One example was a fair amount of space devoted to the decline and fall of Detroit as a city.  Yes, that was happening, but I find it hard to fathom how that affected the styling of General Motors automobiles.

Another gripe has to do with the writer including too much 21st century sociopolitical perspective.  I prefer histories grounded in the times being dealt with because that was the context of the lives as being lived, not those lives in the context of present times.

In a work of any size there will be mistakes.  I make them, maybe you make them.  Even so, they can be annoying.  Too many can render a book worthless to a reader because one has to wonder how many unrecognized mistakes there might be.  Two mistakes that bothered me were: (1) John Tjaarda, whose designs led to the Lincoln Zephyr, was called "Tom Tjaarda," the name of John's son; (2) Edmund Anderson, who later directed American Motors styling is called "Elwood Anderson."  The author seems to have had Elwood Engel of Ford and Chrysler on his mind.

I'm not telling you to avoid the book.  I suggest you buy the cheaper Kindle version, a price more in line with its worth.