Tim Neely (ed.), "Warman's" Beatles Field Guide: Values and Identification

The Beatles Field Guide is a useful, US-centric guide to all that is official Beatles recordings and memorabilia. The opinionated introductory material contextualizes the Beatles' music and reminds us of their contribution to music for ever more (although we may doubt the authors' authority with mistakes such as " ... when Lennon and McCarthy sat down to write ... "). These initial ramblings do not add much to the detail that follows and seem superfluous and a waste of brevity, especially for something that professes to be a useful pocket size.

Other gripes include the lack of a discernable order, chronological or otherwise in the memorabilia section, plus yet more excessive volume for this "pocket edition" coming from an intriguing, but perhaps desperately positive chronological essay on collaborations between the Fab Four plus one (George Martin) after their official split.

I'm sure the guide will be useful to someone, but they had better have big pockets!