The American Farm Tractor: A History of the Classic Tractor

by Randy Leffingwell

This is the first complete chronicle depicting the classic American farm tractor. Featuring over 200 extraordinary color photographs of famous and obscure makes like John Deere, Ford, Waterloo Boy, Best, and more. Each is brought to life in accurate, detailed accounts of their colorful past. The first of its kind, this long-awaited, one-volume library will be a welcome addition to any bookshelf.

191 pages, Hardcover

First published November 4, 1991

About the author

Photographer and writer, Randy Leffingwell, has more than 35 books in print, primarily on Americana subjects. These cover interests and areas as diverse as the American barn and Harley-Davidson motorcycles, California’s wine country and John Deere farm tractors. His awareness of and attraction to moving things goes back as far as he can remember, to the first Dinky Toys and Match Box cars his father and mother gave him. His practical introduction to real sports cars came several years later when his uncle took him to watch a weekend of racing events at Meadowdale International Raceway in suburban Chicago.

Throughout all this time, however, he imagined himself becoming an architect and his life-long admiration of buildings and design began with frequent trips to downtown Chicago. While in undergraduate studies at Kansas University in the architectural engineering sequence, he discovered photography, journalism, and reawakened an earlier passion for writing. He scarcely looked back as he shifted his major studies from architecture, through English, Art History, psychology, and finally to the William Allen White school of Journalism for a BS in photojournalism.

Following graduation from KU, Randy began a successful career as a photojournalist first at the Kansas City TIMES, then joining the staff of the Chicago SUN-TIMES where he remained for nine years. He then worked as associate editor at AutoWeek magazine in Detroit, before being hired by the Los Angeles TIMES as a writer/photographer. He worked for the TIMES for 11 years, covering everything from news stories to personality profiles to food features throughout Italy, film festivals in France and Utah, and live theater in London. It was, he says, a great job and a great place to work.

His latest project is a large history of Harley-Davidson for them. During this project, he photographed 193 motorcycles from the Harley-Davidson Archives Collection and he completed the corresponding text for the book in early April 2007. Release of this 432 page book tentatively is scheduled for early 2008.

Reviews

[Paul Vanden · Rating 3 out of 5]

The american farm tractor by Randy Leffingwell is a book that explains farm tractors, who built the company, how the grew, and where they ended up. In the book they had said that there were 200 or so companies but in a few years it got down to the 20's. It talks about John Deere, Case, International harvester, White, Caterpillar, Allis Chalmers, and Ford. I wouldn't recommend this book because it wasn't that interesting of information, and got into details i didn't care for.

[Cws]

631.37 Lef