Tractor heritage, news and features

Book review: August 2010

This month's book reviews by Tractor Magazine.

We have teamed up with Amazon UK to allow you to purchase many of them on-line at reduced prices.

If you have a title you'd like us to review, please drop the Tractor team a line from our contact page.

How to forecast the weather – Five copies to give away

THE weather – it must be the greatest talking point ever in this country because of its immense changeability. And those brave people who forecast the weather are right in the firing line when things don't go to plan.

So veteran author Stan Yorke's latest book Weather Forecasting Made Simple should be a winner; promising, as it does, to explain the basic weather principles and how to read skies and clouds and interpret daily weather forecasts. It should also give those who wish to the confidence to set about predicting the local weather for themselves.

This is a fascinating and very user-friendly little handbook which will be of interest to anyone who would like to know more about the weather, how it happens and how to come near to predicting it. And that is just about everyone, especially those who live and work outside a great deal of the time and who have precious livestock, crops and machinery.

Weather Forecasting Made Simple is published by Countryside Books at £5.99 and is available from all good booksellers, some local garden centres and attractions and direct from the publishers at www.countrysidebooks.co.uk

ISBN 978-1-84674-197-5

Countryside Books, the publishers, are offering copies of Weather Forecasting Made Simple to Tractor magazine readers at a special price of £4.99 – £1 off the cover price of £5.99 – inclusive of postage and packing.

If you would like a copy, please print your name, address and the title of the book you want clearly on a sheet of paper and send it with a cheque (payable to Countryside Books) to Tractor Magazine Offer, Countryside Books, 2 Highfield Avenue, Newbury, Berkshire RG14 5DS. Tel: Newbury 01635 43816 or email info@countrysidebooks.co.uk

Tractor Magazine (August 2010) has five copies of Weather Forecasting Made Simple to give away. For your chance to win a copy, Enter here>>

The Big Book of Farmall Tractors

THIS book is a complete model-by-model encyclopaedia of all the Farmall tractors, plus there are sections on Classic toys, Brochures & Collectibles. While it contains modern images of concours tractors that are finished to a cosmetic standard never seen when new, there are also period black & white photos, brochures and adverts which give the reader a flavour of what these tractors meant in their heyday. The scene is set with a short history of the tractor until 1924, including the early history of the International Harvester Company.

The first production Farmall came out in 1924; after its manufacture ended, it became known as the Regular to distinguish it from the subsequent F series that came along in 1932, which then made way for the styled tractors from 1939. The final iteration of the Farmall proper was the Number series which ended in 1962, making way in 1963-73 for the larger tractors that owed little to the original concept of the 1924 Farmall, a tractor that could plough, do belt work and cultivate crops, if necessary using its rear PTO.

The book concentrates on the tractors made in the US, but there are references to the German DF-25, British-assembled M and British-made BMD; the 1953 Coronation Special Super BMD looks very fine in its special Gold paint livery. A must for any IHC enthusiast, this will also appeal to anyone with an interest in the development of the tractor through 50 years during the middle half of the last century.

ISBN 978-0-7603-3605-2

The Big Book of Farmall Tractors – Robert N Pripps, Softback, 208 pages, A4, with black & white and colour contemporary and modern images and adverts, £18.99, published by Voyageur Press, £18.99, available in the UK from Grantham Book Services, www.granthambookservices.co.uk, 01206 255777.

Tractors 1880s to 1980s

THIS book by well-known author Nick Baldwin takes the reader on a trip though the development of the tractor from the early internal combustion-engined machines based on steam chassis through to the products of the early 1980s.

What brings the book alive is the excellent selection of brochures and advertisements that are reproduced.

The chapter on ‘Developments between the World Wars’ explains how so many tractor manufacturers either went to the wall or merged.

ISBN 978-0-74780-754-4

Tractors 1880s to 1980s by Nick Baldwin, Shire Library, Softback, 64 pages, A5, with black & white and colour contemporary images and adverts, £5.99, 01865 727022, www.shirebooks.co.uk

Beautiful Cows

OK, this isn’t a book about tractors, but so many readers enjoy the articles in Tractor Magazine on farm animals that this lovely publication will appeal to many.

With full page photographs of 37 different breeds of cow, along with a note on their features, use, size and where in the world they are found, the book celebrates the female of the bovine species. As well as the better known breeds, including Charolais and Ayrshire, there are less well-known ones such as the British Blue, derived from the double-muscled Belgian Blue and British White. Whether you like looking at cattle, or eating them, this book will give a lot of pleasure.

ISBN 978-0-711230-81-1

Beautiful Cows by Val Porter, photographed by Jeremy Hopley and Andrew Perris, 112 pages, Softback, £12.99, published by Frances Lincoln Limited www.franceslincoln.com