The book under review is a new title from Army Books of Russia, the review sample was kindly sent to me by Serge, many thanks to him.

The book is the BMP1 1964 -2000 and is published by Russian motor books, Isbn no 5-09-873406-4 published in 2000. Available from armybook.com

It is printed on A4 portrait format on good paper with glossy covers. In its 74 pages it has the following; 35 -1/72 scale side drawings, 1 - 1/72 scale plan, 1-1/35 scale plan, 6 colour profiles, and lastly 250+ black and white photographs. The bulk of the text is in Russian with selected sections in English.

It covers all the known and a few unknown variants of this versatile vehicle in a chronological order from the first developments to the very latest updates. It also included a section of overseas sales and end users, plus the numbers involved a very useful section to have. It also covers the civilian and forestry adaptations to these vehicles.

It also contains sections taken directly from the workshop manual and has several sectional side views of the various internal differences to type.

The problems with some of the photographs, they are grainy and lose some detail and clarity. Also they have crammed in too many small photographs per page, several, for example have 12 in number.

On a personnel note I would like to have seen this published in two parts. The sectional drawings could then have been made larger. The photographs could have then been enlarged and less to a page. This would have allowed for more 1/35scale drawings and plans. Lastly the English captions could also have been enlarged to give more of a historical and factual background.

If you have no other book on the subject then is going to be a very good starting point for reference material and alterations to make your kit stand out from the rest.

Do not let the above comments put you off they are mine and mine alone. So if you want a good well-researched book on the BMP1 Series of vehicles you will not go far wrong  with this one.

Highly recommended by Ian Sadler