Zenith Press

Tanks

by  Michael Green with James D. Brown and Christophe Vallier

Reviewed By  Dennis Tennant, IPMS# 41582

MSRP: $14.99 ISBN: 978-0-7603-3351-8 192 pages, softbound Website: www.zenithpress.com One of the latest offerings from Zenith Press is this book featuring the various tanks of the "big five" participants in WWII – covering tank developments before, during and well after that war. The book is stuffed with color photos and descriptions of tanks from Britain, France, Germany, America and Russia. While the last section of the book includes a sampling of tanks from other nations including Japan, Sweden and, of course, Israel, the main focus is on tanks from the "big five." This book is about tanks. If it ain’t got a main gun, you won’t find it here. It’s divided into chapters according to country of origin. Each section begins with a short history of that country’s tank development programs stretching back to WWI with supporting photos (usually more than one but less than five) of the main variants (i.e. Churchills, Shermans, Tigers, T-34s, etc.) and short info boxes with the barest of info about specific vehicles. Tanks range in date from the WWI British Mark I to the American Abrams MBT. The authors obviously put in a lot of work gathering high-quality photos of the tanks featured and, with the help of experts at the Patton Tank Museum at Fort Knox, the Tank Museum at Bovington and TACOM’s history office, they have created a fairly comprehensive and concise survey of the history of the tank. From a modeler’s perspective, the photos are a mix of pictures of the tanks in action during wartime, museum exhibit photos and shots of the tanks in action today (or restored tanks giving demonstrations). No plans or any sort of detailed diagrams are included, just photos. The photos will provide some useful diorama and weathering ideas for your armor projects but if you’re looking for detail shots showing the differences between the variants of, for example, a Tiger tank, this book won’t be too helpful. If you’re looking for a book that will give you a broad overview of tanks or one that will start a young armor modeler off on the right track (pardon the pun), this book should be on your short list. I give it high marks for the quality of the photos and the variety of tank variants covered. Thanks to Zenith Press for providing IPMS with a review copy.

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