I bought 3 book this New Year. One on beer (shit one, more on that on a later post), a Che Guevara bibliography (still waiting to be read) and this jewel about pinballs. It sounds like sad cases' hobby, but pinballs are actually incredibly cool and this book is just a very good introduction to the history and inner workings of pinballs. You can sort of see that he is not a professional writer, the style is a bit shabby every now and then, but the guy is so keen it is just joy to read him. It goes through all the history including flippers, bumpers, scoring devices, mutli platfors, EM-SS transition, pinball art, alternative experiments, etc., etc. It is amazing how much text the guy actually managed to write on the theme without repeating himself much... For example, did you know that flippers didn't exist before fifties and the first time they put them in, they pointed outwards? Or that flippers used to be just 2 inches long? And that you had to manually push ball into the lane using a strange contraption on early pinballs? Warmly recommended.
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