This impeccably photographed and imminently enjoyable collection of stories finds Zevy, the storyteller behind Schlepping Across the Nile, recounting the joy of hunting and preserving vintage radios, from a 1938 Emerson Bullseye with its “unmistakable and stunning Sakhnoffsky design” to a 1975 Spider-Man transistor radio ordered off Ebay to dazzle a grandnephew. As in Zevy’s other amusing collections of not-quite-nonfiction stories, Radio Daze is penned in a polished, wisecracking, conversational style that wastes few words, this time offering insight into the role radios play in his personal life and our collective history while also exploring a resonant question: What lengths would you go to add the perfect piece to the collection you treasure but that others may find a little weird?

Zevy would go pretty far. His friends Allie, Lewberg, and Goldfarb try their best to reel him in, but for the most part, they have failed. Zevy has endured cranky neighbors, the film industry, and an unpredictable NFT market, to add to his impressive collection, documented here in striking photos. The vibrant colors of radios from the art deco and space-age eras are in compelling harmony with the designs. But his “descent” doesn’t come at the cost of his decency. Touchingly, when he scores his top-of-the-list dream find, a 1946 Cyarts manufactured with Plexon and Lucite, for a surprisingly good price at a Miami pawn shop, he posts a cautious note online inviting anyone who’s had such a radio stolen to contact him.

As always, Zevy makes no claim to the factual veracity of these tales, which build to wry twists, sharp jokes, and incisive, even prankish surprises—in fact, the one about the Spider-Man transistor radio ends with family members telling him it would work better if he made it less true. For all the radio history, here, Zevy’s real subiect is collecting itself; let radios stand in for any of our passions, pursued and collected over the years, and Radio Daze will often show ourselves.

Takeaway: Funny, surprising stories of a collector’s passion for gorgeous vintage radios.