The Sneaker Book: Anatomy of an Industry and an Icon

by Tom Vanderbilt

Sneakers have gone--seemingly overnight--from being childhood summer staples to serious athletic instruments to full-fledged lifestyle accoutrements, but the transition is hazy. Just when and why did America (and the world) go sneaker crazy? The Sneaker Book is an entertaining, informative look at this fascinating, $11-billion-a-year industry. How (and by whom) are sneakers made? Where does your money go when you buy a pair? Who are the companies...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1565844068
• ISBN13: 9781565844063
• Release Date: August 1998
• Publisher: New Press
• Length: 177 Pages
• Weight: 0.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 7.0" x 7.2"

Customer Reviews

A good book on sneaks, but...

"The Sneaker Book: Anatomy of an Industry and An Icon" is well-written and excellently researched. The badly-placed black-and-white sneaker photos and its academic tone, however, offer the book as an informative but slightly boring term paper on the sneaker industry. Casual readers will probably (and rightly) want more color and certainly more sneaker photographs, but these flaws do not seriously hamper the book.

A must for sneaker freaks

For a short book, Vanderbilt puts forth a lot of good information about athletic shoes, their history, and their meaning, especially among kids today. If you love sneakers, you'll love this book...