Salamander Books nostalgia

[uk 75]

Although we are well provided for these days with books, magazines and above all the Internet, I still enjoy my collection of Salamander books from the 70s and 80s.
These big glossy full colour books were amazing at a time when most books on modern weapons were mainly illustrated in black and white.
For those younger site members who groan at the mention of nostalgia I bet there are books or websites in your world which already have a similar impact. Feel free to pile in with them.

 

[SOC]

Not only were the big Salamander books excellent, their smaller ones were great fun as well. I've still got a collection of those on my shelf, most of which were bought at a NATO bookstore in Germany in the 1980s.

 

[sferrin]

Although we are well provided for these days with books, magazines and above all the Internet, I still enjoy my collection of Salamander books from the 70s and 80s.
These big glossy full colour books were amazing at a time when most books on modern weapons were mainly illustrated in black and white.
For those younger site members who groan at the mention of nostalgia I bet there are books or websites in your world which already have a similar impact. Feel free to pile in with them.

I had both of those. Two editions of the one on the left.

 

[batigol]

The Salamander "Illustrated Guides to ..." got me hooked on technology and aviation as a kid. My local public library had a huge selection of all those glorious mid to late Cold War books from authors like the late Bill Gunston. I used to love dragging my parents there after school to check out new books. They drew the line when I tried to take home a old copy of Jane's Fighting Ships. It was... unwieldy for an 8 year old. I've been slowly collecting the ones I remember reading back then.

This set was also fantastic, especially the excellent full-size illustrations and the sections on "emerging" technologies and basic explanations for things such as sonar, retreating blade stall and the Doppler effect. All that stuff was fascinating to my young mind and fostered a life-long interest in all things science and technology.

 

[sferrin]

I used to have most of those but my little brother made off with some of them when I went away to college.

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

I re-purchased mine later on. They were sufficiently common in the UK you could pick them up easily.

 

[archipeppe]

In 1987 I brought the Italian edition of the "Modern Warships", I really like it.
Since then is carefully preserved in my personal library.

 

[Antonio]

Same story as Batigol. I have many Salamander, both Spanish and English editions, since my childhood. I was always rewarded with books when I was at school. Jane’s volumes were out of reach as well.

 

[sferrin]

I re-purchased mine later on. They were sufficiently common in the UK you could pick them up easily.

I re-purchased my set of Weapons and Warfare, and picked up some of the oldies I used to check out of local libraries as a kid. I sill want a hard cover edition of NASA's SP-413 (the space colony one) but in years of looking now and then I've never seen one. There was one at the local library when I was a teenager.

 

[Hood]

I don't want to get dew eyed and rose tinted but I miss books like these.

The Illustrated Guides series is still very common in second-hand bookshops across the UK, though some titles in the series are rarer than others, proving that some sold better at the time.

I still have a couple of Salamanders on my bookshelves, mainly for recreational purposes now: Stealth Warplanes by Doug Richardson, Illustrated Guide to Future Warplanes, and the Illustrated Guide to Spyplanes and the slightly later (and vastly more massive) The Complete Book of Fighters.
A book in a very similar vein is Jet Warplanes of the Twenty-First Century (published in 1986 obvs), by Michael J. H. Taylor for Bison Books.

In the 1980s Chancellor Press was very prolific too, like David Mondey's Aircraft of series (British WW2, American WW2, Axis WW2, Commercial Aircraft).
And in the early 1990s Blitz Editions as an imprint of the Aerospace Publishing partworks had numerous small volumes, a couple of which I've hung onto, the Directory of the World's Weapons being a lovely little compendium.

My personal treasures are Ships of the World's Navies and Air Forces of the World both by Chris Chant and published in 1990 by Brian Trodd Publishing. My first real 'big' books on military topics. I still remember persuading my mum to part buy Air Forces of the World for me when I was ten. Both still sit on my bookshelf and I still thumb through them even though I must know each page by heart by now!

 

[LowObservable]

All made possible by cheap full-color printing in Hong Kong, cheap containerized shipping, and journalists moonlighting for beer money. But the content was mostly of very decent quality, and usually got a read-over by one of the older writers in the game.

 

[sferrin]

All made possible by cheap full-color printing in Hong Kong, cheap containerized shipping, and journalists moonlighting for beer money. But the content was mostly of very decent quality, and usually got a read-over by one of the older writers in the game.

Yours were almost always on the must-buy list too. You and Bill Gunston were at the top of my list.

 

[DWG]

Must see what I can find on the family bookshelves when I visit my mother next week!

 

[AeroFranz]

"Future Fighters" was my favorite when i was a kid. It's obviously been distinctly outdated for a while now, but I bought another copy to replace my old one when it showed up at the local used book store. All those artist's paintings of ATF concepts would really get your imagination firing.

 

[airman]

I remember that Fratelli Fabbri Editore made italian edition of " Bombers of WW2" and " Fighters of Axis " originally edited by Salamander Books.