Outlaw Machine
Harley-Davidson and the Search for the American Soul
by Brock W. Yates 
Hardcover - 202 pages 1 Ed edition (June 1999) Little Brown & Company; ISBN: 0316967181
The Harley-Davidson motorcycle, writes Brock Yates, is a quintessentially American machine: "flawed but honest and forthright, bombastic and audacious like the nation that produced it." Anyone who has pulled off the road to let a pack of Hells Angels roar by, or who has watched an executive trade in his Rolex for leather chaps and a custom Softail, also knows that the allure of the Harley is its rebellious, bad-guy mystique. In Outlaw Machine, Yates sets out to document the history of Harley-Davidson, as a company and as a symbol that helped create - and now sustains - American motorcycle culture. 

What Yates gives us, in prose that aims for the sound and fury of his subject but sometimes suffers from a lack of agility, is a modern American success story--"the long ride of the Harley-Davidson into the mainstream." It is the story of how the Harley became the vehicle of choice for rebels and outlaw bikers; how the company distanced itself from this media-enhanced, anti-establishment image as it suffered the onslaught of Japanese imports; how the company stumbled, close to bankruptcy, into the '80s when it realized that the hard-core biker contingent exhibited unequaled brand loyalty. "If this rebelliousness, this sheer vitality and off-the-wall lust for the elemental life could somehow be tapped to offset the seamless onslaught of the Japanese, perhaps ... Harley-Davidson could survive."  

Harley-Davidson has capitalized on its "reputation of veiled menace" to establish a marketing niche for the record books, and its classically styled, gleaming machines have become one of the most sought-after status symbols of the '90s. Yet Yates suggests that the Harley's power transcends the mainstream's co-option of its renegade image. "If that rumble, that ungodly roar, that death threat to collectivism and convention dies away, it will be time to turn out the lights." -- Svenja Soldovieri

Kamikaze Biker : Parody and Anomy in Affluent Japan
Ikuya Sato, Gerald D. Suttles (Designer)
In this firsthand account of high-risk car and motorcycle racing in Japan, Ikuya Sato shows how affluence and consumerism have spawned various experimental and deviant lifestyles among Japan's youth. KAMIKAZE BIKER offers an intriguing look at a form of delinquency in a country traditionally thought to be devoid of such social problems. Hardcover - 277 pages (July 1991)
University of Chicago Press; ISBN: 0226735257

Hell's Angels : A Strange and Terrible Saga 
by Hunter S. Thompson 
An extraordinary insight into motorcycle outlaws by the man who brought us the Fear & Loathing series.
Paperback - 273 pages (September 1996) 
Ballantine Books (Trd Pap); ISBN: 0345410084

The Rebels : A Brotherhood of Outlaw Bikers
Daniel R. Wolf
Paperback Reprint edition (March 1995)
Univ of Toronto Pr; ISBN: 0802073638

Hog Fever
Richard La Plante
Richard La Plante ... obtained the ultimate machine -- a Harley customized to his exact specifications -- and was spending hours lovingly polishing its chrome. From his misadventure-filled trip to Spain to his cross-country America ride that ends in tragedy, La Plante shows how a simple hobby can become a life-altering
obsession. Ingram
Paperback / Published 1997 Forge / 288 pages  ISBN: 0312858302

Mandatory Motorcycle Helmets?
Paperback - 112 pages (March 1997)
Bridgeport Books; ISBN: 1888824034
Writes the author: "Mandatory motorcycle helmet laws are controversial and give rise to strong emotions in many people. This book presents an unemotional analysis of the factors that pertain to those laws. It recognizes that helmets prevent head injuries or deaths for some people but asserts that helmets also cause some accidents, neck injuries and deaths.". Special Order