Pinball Machines For Italy
by Federico Croci
review by Zube (zube@stat.colostate.edu)
Created:  Apr 3, 2010
Updated:  Apr 3, 2010
http://www.stat.colostate.edu/~zube/pmfi.txt

Finally, a good pinball book.

_Pinball Machines for Italy_ is a thin, expensive (35 Euros),
interesting and seriously narrow book.  It documents the silliness of
the Italian government, their crackdown on pinball machines in the 60s
and 70s (money quote:  "Pinball machines and blue jeans lead to
violence") and how pinball manufacturers modified their games for the
Italian market so as to partly or fully comply with the law.

It's not a perfect book, to be sure.  Half of the text is in Italian
(left side of the page), the other half is in English (right side).
This is interesting in itself, but it leads to some odd layouts of
pages and pictures.  Some of the English text could use some polish,
there is one "quiz" (ala Rossignoli's _Complete Pinball_), and the
book runs only to 174 pages, but I forgive all this for three
reasons:

* The author is not the center of the book.  He is documenting history,
not documenting his own personal history, a refreshing change from the
normal dreck of pinball writing.

* The book does not overreach.  The author chose a narrow topic and explained 
it well.  What more could one ask for?

* A solid cover, pages of heavy, glossy stock, a feeling that much care
went into its making.  This is a *beautiful* book, the only one on my
vg/pinball shelf.

Highly recommended.