Your post proves "different strokes for different folks". I wanted my money back as soon as I completed reading a randomly selected chapter not available on the Amazon "preview".

As you note, it contains pieces written by manufacturers and store owners - essentially pr/marketing fluff/corporate history stuff for the most part. All of that is available for free on the web/from the manufacturers themselves - or for the price of a few electrons for an email. I thought that the author's contribution was a simplistic "travel journal" written in a proselytizing-environmentalist tone. The printed version was poorly edited, with grammar and punctuation errors throughout while the Kindle version (yes, I 'read' that also - my friend gave me a printed copy not knowing I'd already bought the Kindle version[actually, my sister had bought it for me]) lacked most of the pictures from the printed version --- though the pics were available online.

I found it the worst waste of "bike book money" I have ever spent.

Obviously my mileage varied from yours.
(My opinion is also partially due to having found over 90% of the non-travel-journal information included in the book on the 'Net. CGAOB/other websites have equal quality trike-travel-journals for free; a 5 second, not very specific Yahoo/Google search returns at least 20 depending on your specific search terms.)