On Mon, 2 Nov 1998, Jim Strickland wrote:
> The best guide to troubleshooting in general (it's actually written for
> air cooled VWs, but it gives you the right philosophy) is John Muir's
> "How to Keep your Volkswagon Alive, a manual of step by step instructions for
> the compleat idiot"
[more than 10 years old]
John Muir's Volkswagen "idiot" book sold over 1.5 million copies, and
launched a trend of marketing books by insulting the reader in the
title. It was a great book.
But then the publisher decided to make an entire series out of it. John
Muir promptly died of a brain tumor. (Some people will do ANYTHING to get
out of participation in a badly conceived project.) Soon there was a VW
Rabbit book, and a Honda book. [If you check out the Honda book, you'll
see that I know what I'm talking about on it.] The subsequent books
still had the fantastic illustrating talent of Peter Aschwanden, but
just were NOT on a par with the original book. The final straw was when
the editor of the Honda book REFUSED to include a flow chart that the
authors had developed on the grounds that "normal people don't understand
flowcharts".
Now there are dozens of publishers of books for "idiots", "dummies",
"morons", and "obnoxious ignorant neo-Luddite jerks". Some of them are
actually pretty good, IN SPITE OF their titles, but none are on a par with
John Muir's original VW book. Particularly that HONDA book! (where at
least ONE of the authors was smart enough to switch to a pseudonym!)
--
Fred Cisin (not a pseudonym) cisin_at_xenosoft.com
XenoSoft http://www.xenosoft.com
2210 Sixth St. (510) 644-9366
Berkeley, CA 94710-2219
Received on Tue Nov 03 1998 - 11:32:50 GMT