Title: Merkava; A History of Israel's Main Battle Tank

Publisher: Tankograd Publishing

Type: Book

Binding: Hardcover with jacket

ISBN#3-936519-01-3

Author: Marsh Gelbart

Cost:$80 US listed

This is the fifth publication on the Merkava series of MBT and is by far the most comprehensive if not the best overall. like so much else in regards to the Israeli army, designations are hard to lock down. This book goes a long way towards clearing up individual designations, at least so far as the Merkava goes.

The book is in A4 size and comes with a very nice cover jacket. There are 175 pages on high quality magazine stock. The book is predominantly a photo essay with descriptive text and some history and notes interspersed. The book unlike the Osprey series is aimed more at the vehicle enthusiast and modeler rather than the historian. The book is published in a bilingual format of English and German. There are nine chapters followed by a Glossary and bibliography.

Covered are all versions from the initial test beds to the latest ARVs based on Merkava 1/2 hulls that have recently entered service. This includes Items like theSholef self propelled 155 artillery vehicle. Mr. Gelbart does a more than satisfactory job in covering engineering attachments. There is unfortunately a lack of detail shots for mounting such hardware, a must for the IDF modeler. This is likely due to the sparsity of such photos and is not likely to change any time soon.

There is virtually nothing that goes against buying this book, aside from the possibly bad choice of blue tabs behind some of the text. This layout sometimes made reading the captions difficult. Thebook is a must for both historian and modeler and is highly recommended. This book will fit nicely next to Tom Gannon's Sherman book on any IDF enthusiasts shelf. I hope we see more from Gelbart.