Book Review: A Grand Complication

I copied this post from my old blog published last year.  As I am now starting fresh with Perpetual in Time this was something I wanted to copy over.

I have just finished reading A Grand Complication by Stacy Perman.

It documents the story of two of America's greatest watch collectors in the 20th Century,  Henry Graves Jr and & James Ward Packard.

Henry Graves Jr was a banker and James Ward Packard was an entrepreneur who was an innovator with lightbulbs and founder of Packard Automobiles.

Henry Graves Jr

James Ward Packard

They both shared a love of complicated mechanical timepieces featuring tourbillons, minute repeaters, perpetual calendars and split seconds chronographs.

It was a friendly rivalry with both trying to obtain the most complicated timepieces from the prestigious houses of Patek Philippe and Vacheron Constantin.

In my opinion it is a very well written book, documenting the histories of both men, watchmaking and the constant love affair of watch collecting.   There are many suprises in the book but I will let you find out  what they are :)

 My thanks to Elizabeth Doerr, who first posted about this book and brought it to my attention.