Jean RrestaynWWII Tank Encyclopaedia, 1939-45

A gift for my 11 year old grandson who is fascinated with tanks

Colorful drawings show great detail as to various color schemes and unit insignias. Very useful for a modeleror an historian.

This is basically the second edition of his previous book from 1996. Instead of categorized by campaign, this time is by country. There are many pictures from the previous book. The captions contain many errors. As many had mentioned, the title of this book "Encyclopedia" is a misnomer. It is a collection of very nice tank paintings by the author. There are 37 paintings of Tiger I.

The pictures, in color, are terrific. Enjoyed looking at them. Since it's billed as an "encyclopedia", I was hoping for text descriptions of the tanks, the differences between the various iterations of the model, and some information about the weaponry available on each model (and their differences/improvements, etc.) I recommend the book for the great pictures and color shadings of camouflage, but you'll need to find something else for an actual description of the tank itself.

While the title claims to be an encyclopedia on WW II tanks it truly is not. Very little information is given about each type of tank or operational history. However, it is a great book for camouflage and markings of WW II tanks. As a modeler I will find it a useful tool as few color photographs are available from that era. I did read other reviews prior to purchasing and I was not disappointed.

This is an excellent book that is full of illustrations. Teenage WWII fan loves it!

Bad choice of title here, its not an encyclopedia as that suggests everything known is in these pages.But it has nice drawings and actual camo patterns used in ww2 with actual markings of tanks in that war

The writing falls short of the spectacular art. Clearly, translating from French to English didn't go as smoothly as hoped...The contents are excellent, with brilliantly rendered full color paintings. The section on USSR armor is too short, however. The mighty JS-2 tank only gets a few pages of coverage.One fascinating entry is the only operational Porsche Tiger I tank. I never even knew Porsche built ANY Tiger I tanks! I'd love to see Restayn do a book on German WW2 super tank prototypes, i.e. "Mouse", "Panther II", "E-100", etc.Looking forward to the next two volumes.

Eigentlich hätte dieses Buch "Encyclopeadia of camouflage schemes" heißen sollen.Wer sich an vielen hübschen, bunten Panzerbildern erfreuen möchte, sei dieses Buch herzlich empfohlen. Das Buch liefert wunderbare Beispiele gebräuchlicher und außergewöhnlicher Tarnmuster des 2. Weltkrieges aller kriegführenden Nationen und dies zu einem unschlagbaren Preis.Wer aber nach einer farbig illustrierten Panzerenzyklopädie des 2. Weltkrieges sucht, sollte seine Finger von diesem Buch lassen.Vorgestellt werden die üblichen 08/15 Fahrzeugtypen, die man in jedem durchschnittlichem Referenzbuch findet. Von Vollständigkeit keine Spur! Wer braucht 16 Abbildungen des allseits bekannten Tigers? Dafür fehlen andere Fahrzeuge und Fahrzeugvarianten völlig.Da ich von dem Verlag sehr verwöhnt war, wurde ich in diesem Fall schwer enttäuscht.Nicht wegen der Qualität der Abbildungen (dafür die zwei Sterne), sondern weil der Titel des Buches mir etwas versprochen hat, was der Inhalt nicht einlöst.Schade!

An expensive book but worth every penny!! My sons are learning a great deal about tanks and are using it to trace their own and manke their own drawings!