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| All Aboard With E.M. Frimbo: World's Greatest Railroad Buff (Kodansha Globe) | 
 enlarge | Authors: Rogers E. M. Whitaker, Tony Hiss
Creator: Mark Livingston
Publisher: Kodansha Amer Inc
Category: Book
List Price: $16.00
Buy New: $2.98
You Save: $13.02 (81%)
Buy New/Used from $2.98
Avg. Customer Rating:  (3 reviews)
Sales Rank: 868522
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Edition: Expanded
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.8 x 1
ISBN: 1568361149
Dewey Decimal Number: 385.092
EAN: 9781568361147
ASIN: 1568361149
Publication Date: April 1997
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
International in scope, this series of non-fiction trade paperbacks offers books that explore the lives, customs and thoughts of peoples and cultures around the world.
Amazon.com Review
Rogers E. M. Whitaker was a longtime reporter for the New Yorker, specializing in "Talk of the Town" pieces. He was also an expert on railroads, and spent most of his non-working time riding trains. Eventually he began contributing pieces about his rail journeys to the magazine, under the pseudonym "E. M. Frimbo." For decades his diligent reporting and sparkling prose glorified trains and destinations. In this collection, assembled by Whitaker's New Yorker colleague Tony Hiss, the reader is taken on rail trips throughout the United States as well as on excursions through Switzerland, Wales, and Siberia.
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| Customer Reviews:
"Get on a train!" March 14, 2003
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
The old nostalgic ways of travel -- railroad trains and ocean liners -- have a romance to them that cars and airplanes just can't match. Rogers E.M. Whitaker, the man behind the pseudonymous E.M. Frimbo, and his sometime collaborator, Tony Hiss, capture some of that romance and interest in these essays by and about the world's greatest railroad buff. Detailing some of Whitaker/Frimbo's great train experiences from the '30s to the '70s, and recapturing the all-but-vanished world of life on the rails, the pieces gathered here make for fascinating and evocative reading.As with any collection of essays, some of the chapters here are better than others. And generally, I found the chapters added to this "greatly expanded edition" to be less satisfying than the earlier ones, though the obituary of Whitaker and the long closing piece, "Frimbo's Peak," were both rather moving. Much of Tony Hiss's preface I could likewise have done without. His predictions for the revival of government-funded passenger rail in the early years of the twenty-first century seem, fortunately, not yet to be coming to pass. But then, it wouldn't be the first time a Hiss was on the wrong side of history. But don't let the preface distract you. The essays themselves are by and large great reading, and have me hoping to hop a train before too much longer myself. Whether you're an inveterate train buff, a long-time Frimbo fan, or just a fan of great travel writing, I recommend grabbing this book and taking to the rails, if only in your mind.
A book for all ages June 12, 1999
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
I read this book as an 11 year old boy, and still remembered it over all these years as a wonderful railroading book. It really captured the glamour and joy of passenger rail travel in those days.And I was excited and thrilled when I met Tony Hiss by chance on the Boston-NYC shuttle, and he told me that the book had been reissued and was available on Amazon. I (virtually) ran right out and purchased it...as much for my 9 year old (also a rail fan) as for myself.
An infectiously enjoyable ode to the joys of train travel April 27, 1999
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
I was the editor of the greatly expanded 1997 edition of this railroading classic of the 1970s. E.M. Frimbo was the alter ego of Whitaker, a writer who spent more than 50 years at the New Yorker, one of the original coterie that included A.J. Liebling, Joseph Mitchell, and others. Beginning in the 1940s, Frimbo began chugging through the pages of the magazine, right up to and beyond Whitaker's death in the early 1980s. In the 1960s, Tony Hiss had come along and become Whitaker's collaborator on these travel essays. When Hiss began to assemble this new edition, he discovered many pieces that were not in the earlier edition, so the book grew by 50%, and includes many photos of Whitaker never published before. Hiss unearthed such articles as one about the railway in Wales that travels through the Potemkin village where the classic TV show "The Prisoner" was filmed, and a final tribute to Whitaker, appropriately mounted to him at Cumbres Pass, the highest elevation in the USA reached by a train. If you have affection for the open (rail)road, then you will love this book.
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