If you love guitars and you love guitar making, then this book is for you! I think everyone who has ever built a guitar loves the story of Paul Reed Smith and PRS Guitars. This book tracks the history of PRS from the very beginning, his grandfather's woodshop, to using his mother's dinning room furniture (I'm not exaggerating!) to make his first guitars, to woking his way backstage to get Santana to look at one of his first guitars.
In addition to the early history, there is a painstaking history of all the different models produced over the years, and PRS growing from a one man shop into the significant brand it is today. It is the quintessential American success story, told through the words of an author who is himself obviously enamored of the story and the guitars. Smith's legacy is well cemented with this tribute, think of how many others wished to break into the stature of Fender® and Gibson® Guitars, and the fact that so far this is the only other manufacturer that has managed to do so.
Combining his favorite elements of the Fender and the Gibson electric guitars was a stroke of ingenuity, and later in his career, interacting with Ted McCarthy of Gibson fame to provide a much loved guitar making idol the chance to have input on a modern electric archtop design was not only a tribute to past genius, but a bit of genius to extend the PRS brand a bit further than it already had.
The book is lavishly illustrated with large photos, in fact some of them are triple page fold outs of the various models over the years. The narrative is inspiring, the photos are excellent, and the book is well printed. If you love guitar history and makers, you will enjoy this book.