Disappointing

I can't think of a better word to describe Brian Cudahy's new book The Malbone Street Wreck, especially considering the amount of hype the book received prior to its release.
     Cudahy did correct a number of significant misconceptions, which I greatly appreciate, but his style is cold and wooden, not what I expected based on his other works.   It has all the charm of a freshman research paper.
     Additionally, there are a number of factual errors surrounding the earlier history of the line that could easily have been verified prior to publication by either the author or his editor, and while they do not affect the principal conclusions of the work they do detract from it.
     A valuable piece of scholarship?  Yes.  But it's not written well enough for anyone other than die-hard buffs to want to have it in their libraries.

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Last updated October 24, 1999