The Martin Book Paperback – October 1, 2006

If you love Martin guitars (which is like asking Yitzhak Perlman if he loves Stradivarius violins), you will definitely love this book. Besides telling the story of the Martin company -- how it started and how it got to where it is today -- it's filled with gorgeous photos (including some triple-page foldouts) of Martin guitars ranging from the 1830s to today's highly esteemed instruments. So you can read the book or look at the photos (and try to avoid drooling down your shirt front). The book is smaller than what's generally referred to as "coffee table" size, which means that some of the photos are a bit small for my taste; but they're still great shots of some great guitars.

Very good product ... Thank YouJerry

This book is an excellent story of the Martin family and how they came to be guitar manufacturers for the past 133 years. It gives you a brief history of the family and the many guitar styles that have been produced through the years. The book also touches briefly on the history of guitar playing in the United States and how the Martin family rose to meet the challenges of the era of the banjo and the mandolin. The book also contains many fine photographs illustrating the Martin line from the beginning until the mid 1990's (when the book was written).The second half of the book is a reference section that lists each Martin guitar style and gives information on how to date particular instruments. This is valuable, especially for collectors since on the early instruments only the cases were labeled and not the guitars themselves.All in all I found the book interesting. My only complaint, and it is a minor one, is since the book was published in 1995 Martin has come out with many special run guitars. Unfortunately they're not covered in this book. If you have even a passing interest in Martin guitars you'll find this book interesting.

A must for the Martin guitar fan. Nice book with lots of history and photos.

This book starts at the beginning tracing the evolution of the Martin family business and the instruments they produced. It is well written with photo illustrations. I have never owned a Martin guitar, but enjoyed reading about this long lasting American company.

What Amazon has done with the Kindle version of this book is horrendous. The beautiful color images which add so much to the value of Carter's history are replaced by black and white images, which are also not able to be enlarged. In many instances images of guitars are so poorly cropped that the guitars look as if they have angular bouts. The price rivals the paperback prices for this book, and is much preferable. I think the lesson once again is, Amazon renders graphics in books in a deplorable manor!

Kindle version is a great read, but the pictures look like the we're cut out by a 5 year old! The guitar images are small and crudely put together.

The history of the Martin family and their devotion to superb craftsmanship is just further evidence in support of the value and excellence of Martin guitars.

アコースティックギターの情報収集用として購入しました。

Excellent book, lots of information on the company the guitars and just FULL of pictures. Well laid out and not just a bunch of facts and dates. Interesting even if your not a guitar nut like my other half! Nice gift for any guitarist though, and a good readable size. Look good on your coffee table too.

If a person wants to read about the history of the Martin guitar company, there's not a ton of options out there, so this book is definitely worthwhile. But I'm wondering if it could have been written in a little more of a chronologically fluent way. Not only does it jump all over the place timewise, but the frequent full pages of photos with captions and side stories keep interrupting the reader's flow. It's like I'd get to an end of a page mid-sentence and then turn the page and get two pages of interesting photos with a few paragraphs about the photos or the people in the photos, and then I'd find myself momentarily stuck in this decision should I read the photo page or should I turn the next page before I lose the flow of the sentence where I left off, maybe come back to the photos later. It could have been formatted better, I found it somewhat fragmented and awkward to read- but maybe that's just me. By the way, mine was an updated edition from 2006 with most current models added. The exception being the newer Performing Artist series.

Having a Martin D-18 guitar led me to this book. I found the history of the company fascinating, particularly its beginnings, which I was ignorant off. The book is very readable, full of information regarding all the guitars and other instruments Martin have made over the years. It's a useful reference book and well illustrated.

それほど厚くはありませんがハードカバーで、マーチンギターの歴史が概観できます。写真はきれいで、データのページも充実しています。