This book is an account of Chessie the Railroad Cat, an advertising icon of the Chesapeake & Ohio (C&O) Railroad that hit its hey-day in the 1930s and 40s. I picked it up because of a conversation I had with someone who had a trivet of Chessie the Railroad Cat and in telling me the story of how he acquired it, he seemed to expect I would know who Chessie was -- and I didn't. I chose this book to fill in that information gap. Overall, it was very helpful in doing so. I learned a lot about railroads in pre-WW2 times and the advertising using Chessie (if I ever see the calendars from the '30s and '40s at a tag sale, I now know to pick them up). The typos and profusion of exclamation points were frustrating, but it was a quick read and fit the bill in giving me the information I sought. ( )