Book Birthdays celebrate one year of a book’s life in social media posts, reviews, and more. This month we’re saying Happy First Book Birthday to The Essential Book of Pickup Trucks (Bison Books, 2025) by Fred Haefele.
About the Book:
Of the sixty million pickups on U.S. highways today, just one in eight was bought for work purposes. The remaining fifty-four million are what truck dealers call “lifestyle purchases.” Does the pickup impulse spring from some deep, organic longing? For agrarian roots, for simpler times, for a driving experience larger than life?
For Fred Haefele, pickup trucks hold a unique place in the American psyche—equal parts fantasy steed and dray horse, they’re avatars of the American spirit. The Essential Book of Pickup Trucks is, like his trucks, uniquely free-spirited: love story, blue-collar writer’s tale, and motor-head memoir.
A Word from the Author:
It’s been a year since my vehicular memoir The Essential Book of Pickup Trucks came out.
On May 5, the launch took place at the Montgomery Distillery in Missoula and a crowd of seventy well-oiled book lovers showed up to make things festive. Since Pickups is more intimate than my previous book, I was nervous, but the crowd proved a responsive one and put me at ease so I thoroughly enjoyed the evening. I went on to give a half dozen readings around Montana.
On June 22, Pickups landed a full-page review in the WSJ and, briefly, achieved the Number One Best Seller spot in Amazon’s automotive category. Pickups will soon be available in audiobook format on iTunes and Audible.
Reviews:
“This rollicking memoir has me missing my own past vehicles (Gus, Hero, Clyde, et al.), but most of all, it has me glad to be able to ride shotgun with Haefele as he spins a tale as compelling as the open road.”—Marc Beaudin, Big Sky Journal
“This reviewer’s ears and eyes pricked up when Fred Haefele’s new memoir, The Essential Book of Pickup Trucks, landed on the Arts Council’s desk. It had already nailed the title; subject and author confirmed it’d be a gas. The pages brim with frank but loving descriptions of the trucks in Haefele’s life.”—Montana State of the Arts Quarterly, Eric Heidle
“The Essential Book of Pickup Trucks is hard to put down.”—Elizabeth Stice, Orange Blossom Ordinary
“Mr. Haefele’s love for trucks is decidedly more practical: He is as dependent on his pickups as Patton was on his tanks. . . . Malodorous or not, his trucks took him where he needed to go.”—Dave Shiflett, Wall Street Journal
In the Media:
From the Desk of Fred Haefele: The Truth About Vehicular Memoir
UNP blog 