Relates the history of the tractor and shows the changes in design that have resulted in the diesel-powered giants of today.

Original ads, historic design drawings, and factory photographs tell the definitive story of the American tractor's development, mechanical innovations, groundbreaking designs, and company histories. Best-selling author Randy Leffingwell researched and photographed restored classics and one-of-a-kind experimental models from coast-to-coast to deliver the goods on American farm tractor. This is the book that started it all! Previous hardcover edition (0-87938-532-4 pub 1991) has sold a staggering 150,000!

Did you know . . . That the first tractors had metal wheels with no tyres? That a tractor can weigh as much as five elephants? That a tractor can pull as much as 500 horses can? Tractors are big and powerful! They can plough, lift, dig, mow and power through the biggest farms, the longest roads and your very own backyard. Find out everything you want to know about these amazing machines in theBig Book of Tractors.

"Mr. Dahlstrom...has written a superb history of the tractor and this long-forgotten period of capitalism in U.S. agriculture. We now know the whole story of when farming, business and the free-market economy diverged, divided and conquered." —Wall Street Journal Discover the untold story of the “tractor wars,” the twenty-year period that introduced power farming—the most fundamental change in world agriculture in hundreds of years. Before John Deere, Ford, and International Harvester became icons of American business, they were competitors in a forgotten battle for the farm. From 1908-1928, against the backdrop of a world war and economic depression, these brands were engaged in a race to introduce the tractor and revolutionize farming. By the turn of the twentieth century, four million people had left rural America and moved to cities, leaving the nation’s farms shorthanded for the work of plowing, planting, cultivating, harvesting, and threshing. That’s why the introduction of the tractor is an innovation story as essential as man’s landing on the moon or the advent of the internet—after all, with the tractor, a shrinking farm population could still feed a growing world. But getting the tractor from the boardroom to the drafting table, then from factory and the farm, was a technological and competitive battle that until now, has never been fully told. A researcher, historian, and writer, Neil Dahlstrom has spent decades in the corporate archives at John Deere. In Tractor Wars, Dahlstrom offers an insider’s view of a story that entwines a myriad of brands and characters, stakes and plots: the Reverend Daniel Hartsough, a pastor turned tractor designer; Alexander Legge, the eventual president of International Harvester, a former cowboy who took on Henry Ford; William Butterworth and the oft-at-odds leadership team at John Deere that partnered with the enigmatic Ford but planned for his ultimate failure. With all the bitterness and drama of the race between Ford, Dodge, and General Motors, Tractor Wars is the untold story of industry stalwarts and disruptors, inventors, and administrators racing to invent modern agriculture—a power farming revolution that would usher in a whole new world.

A beautiful, full-color book devoted to the granddaddy of today's tractors -- the steam behemoths that worked the fields in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Steam manufacturers, including Case and Caterpillar, are fully covered.