Today, we are accustomed to equating Mack trucks with heavy-duty, on- and off-highway models with a toughness marked by the phrase “Built like a Mack truck.” As this book illustrates, there is more to the story. Edited by Thomas E. Warth, one of the founders of book publisher Iconografix, this Photo Archive Series volume “features the lighter-duty models in the Mack E range” manufactured from 1936 to 1951. The landscape format paperback reflects the initial approach of the series presenting 123 full-page photographs with very limited captions “made available by the archive”—in this case the Mack Trucks Historical Museum Archives. The volume includes a brief one-page introduction and a paragraph highlighting each of the seven model sections arranged chronologically. The photos offer a variety of trucks and bodies including unique streamlined trucks and bodies, and pickups—yes, Mack made pickups as well as delivery vans, police wagons, ambulances, tankers, dump trucks, and tractor trailers. In addition, photos feature chassis, specific mechanical components, and engines. Given the very limited captions, readers are encouraged to conduct their own research—an unlikely effort for most. However, the photographs alone provide a compelling reason to add the book to a shelf near you.

Book Review by Robert Gabrick