Roller Coasters: A Thrill Seeker's Guide to the Ultimate Scream Machines - Hardcover

Coker, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1402713339 ISBN 13: 9781402713330

Publisher: Main Street, 2002

Synopsis

More than 150 awe-inspiring images of the world’s most terrifying rides put readers in the front seat of the largest, fastest, steepest, loopiest coasters ever built. From fifteenth-century Russian slides to the original Coney Island Cyclone to modern-day steel gigacoasters like Cedar Point’s Millennium Force, this breathtaking, fabulously illustrated guide offers a wild trip through the evolution of roller coasters. Inside, there’s coverage of 200 individual examples, including wooden wonders and steel marvels, inverted coasters, floorless coasters, suspended coasters, and modern hypercoasters. Profiles on coaster engineers and an in-depth look at the ever-evolving technology of coaster design and construction round out this fun survey.

About this title

From Booklist:

The archetypal amusement park rides are the Ferris wheel and the roller coaster, and one is for wimps, and the other isn't. This big, square book contains a little roller-coaster history and a lot of rider's-p.o.v. gushing about the most, uh, satisfying coasters, mostly in the U.S. but really throughout the world. The Russians got the concept first; as a little stereotypical thinking should suggest, their original versions involved plunging down iced wooden ramps on blocks of ice, soon replaced by sleds. In the early nineteenth century, the French started sending rolling stock down ramps, hauling it up beforehand with a cable system, soon replaced by the chain lift. There are two kinds of coasters: "woodies," which pioneered the basic styles of coaster, and coasters of steel (which are not called "steelies") whose malleability allows a host of big and little variations. But the heck with info. Glom the color pictures, and chug Coker's gee-whiz descriptions of some of the world's best coaster-coasts. This is browser heaven, and all for only $15.98. Jeepers! Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From School Library Journal:

Adult/High School-Packed with great color photos and breathless "you-are-there" narration, this is the book for coaster fanatics. It starts slowly with the history of these unique thrill rides and then takes off with vivid descriptions of great machines, from classic "woodies" like The Beast ("heaving and lurching with animalistic rage") to innovative steel coasters like Nitro ("all that's between us and the cold, bare earth more than 18 stories below is a whole lot of nothing") and the record-breaking hyper- and giga-coasters with drops of at least 200 or 300 feet, respectively. The volume concludes with a tantalizing glimpse of rides to come and an appendix of amusement parks in the United States and overseas for readers compelled to match the author's poetic prose with the real thing. Roller Coasters leaves readers panting, a little shaken, and, like a great ride, wanting to go again.
Susan Salpini, Fairfax County Public Schools, VA
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Main Street
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1402713339
• ISBN 13: 9781402713330
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 144