From Donut Media’s Past Gas to Elizabeth Blackstock’s Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys there is a plethora of automotive history to digest, and further reading to partake.

FANTASTIC STORIES

• The Race to the Future: 8,000 Miles to Paris – The Adventure That Accelerated the Twentieth Century
  • Author: Kassia St. Clair
  • Release Date: 14 May 2024
  • Time Period: 1907
  • Summary: The racers―an Italian prince and his chauffeur, a French racing driver, a con man, and several rival journalists―battle over steep inclines, through narrow mountain passages, and across the arid Gobi Desert. Competitors endure torrential rain and choking dust. There are barely any roads, and petrol is almost impossible to find. A global audience of millions follows each twist and turn, devouring reports telegraphed from the course.

• Blood and Smoke: A True Tale of Mystery, Mayhem and the Birth of the Indy 500
  • Author: Charles Leerhsen
  • Release Date: 22 May 2012
  • Time Period: 1911
  • Summary: The Indy 500 was created to showcase the controversial new sport of automobile racing, which was sweeping the country. Daring young men risked life and limb by driving automobiles at the astonishing speed of seventy miles per hour with no seat belts, hard helmets, or roll bars. When the Indianapolis Speedway opened in 1909, seven people were killed, some of them spectators. Oil-slicked surfaces, clouds of smoke, exploding tires, and flying grit all made driving extremely hazardous, especially with the open-cockpit, windshield-less vehicles. Most drivers rode with a mechanic, who pumped oil manually while watching out for cars attempting to pass, and drivers would sometimes throw wrenches or bolts at each other during the race. The night before an event the racers would take up a collection for the next day’s new widows.

• Cannonball!: World’s Greatest Outlaw Road Race
  • Author: Brock Yates
  • Release Date: 12 Oct 2003
  • Time Period: 1971
  • Summary: Brock Yates, senior editor of Car and Driver Magazine, created the now infamous Cannonball Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash; a flat out, no-holds-barred race from New York City to Redondo Beach, California. Setting out to prove that well trained drivers could safely navigate the American highways at speeds in excess of the posted limits, Mr. Yates created a spectacle reminiscent of the glory days of the barnstorming pilots. Filled with fascinating unpublished stories, nostalgic and modern-day photographs, inside information and hilarious stories from this outrageous and incredibly immoral rally.

• Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans
  • Author: A. J. Baime
  • Release Date: 17 Jun 2010
  • Time Period: 1966
  • Summary: Go Like Hell tells the remarkable story of how Henry Ford II, with the help of a young visionary named Lee Iacocca and a former racing champion turned engineer, Carroll Shelby, concocted a scheme to reinvent the Ford company. They would enter the high-stakes world of European car racing, where an adventurous few threw safety and sanity to the wind. They would design, build, and race a car that could beat Ferrari at his own game at the most prestigious and brutal race in the world, something no American car had ever done.

• Faster: How a Jewish Driver, an American Heiress, and a Legendary Car Beat Hitler’s Best
  • Author: Neal Bascomb
  • Release Date: 4 May 2021
  • Time Period: 1938
  • Summary: As Nazi Germany launched its campaign of racial terror and pushed the world toward war, three unlikely heroes—a driver banned from the best European teams because of his Jewish heritage, the owner of a faltering automaker company, and the adventurous daughter of an American multimillionaire—banded together to challenge Hitler’s dominance at the Grand Prix, the apex of motorsport. Bringing to life this glamorous era and the sport that defined it, Faster chronicles one of the most inspiring, death-defying upsets of all time: a symbolic blow against the Nazis during history’s darkest hour.

• The Racers: How an Outcast Driver, an American Heiress, and a Legendary Car Challenged Hitler’s
  • Author: Neal Bascomb
  • Release Date: 6 Oct 2020
  • Time Period: 1938
  • Summary: In the years before World War II, Adolf Hitler wanted to prove the greatness of the Third Reich in everything from track and field to motorsports. The Nazis poured money into the development of new race cars, and Mercedes-Benz came out with a stable of supercharged automobiles called Silver Arrows. Their drivers dominated the sensational world of European Grand Prix racing and saluted Hitler on their many returns home with victory. As the Third Reich stripped Jews of their rights and began their march toward war, one driver, René Dreyfus, a 32-year-old Frenchman of Jewish heritage who had enjoyed some early successes on the racing circuit, was barred from driving on any German or Italian race teams, which fielded the best in class, due to the rise of Hitler and Benito Mussolini. So it was that in 1937, Lucy Schell, an American heiress and top Monte Carlo Rally driver, needed a racer for a new team she was creating to take on Germany’s Silver Arrows. Sensing untapped potential in Dreyfus, she funded the development of a nimble tiger of a new car built by a little-known French manufacturer called Delahaye. As the nations of Europe marched ever closer to war, Schell and Dreyfus faced down Hitler’s top drivers, and the world held its breath in anticipation, waiting to see who would triumph.

• Driven to Crime: True Stories of Wrongdoing in Motor Racing
  • Author: Crispian Besley
  • Release Date: 31 Jan 2023
  • Time Period: 1950s-to later
  • Summary: Over 60 true stories cover webs of deceit and numerous crimes including drug trafficking, corruption, embezzlement, robbery, fraud, murder and money laundering. The author investigates misdemeanors at all levels, from drivers, designers and mechanics to team owners, entrants and sponsors.

• Survival of the Fastest: Weed, Speed, and the 1980s Drug Scandal that Shocked the Sports World
  • Author: A.J. Baime
  • Release Date: 2 Aug 2022
  • Time Period: 1980
  • Summary: As a kid, Randy Lanier dreamed of achieving four-wheel glory at the Indianapolis 500, but knew he’d never be able to afford the most expensive sport on earth. That all changed when he bought a speedboat and began smuggling pot from the Bahamas. Fueled by what would become a historically massive smuggling operation, he started racing cars and became an overnight sensation. For Randy and his teammates, money was no object, and bigger hauls meant faster cars. At every event they attended, they were behind the wheel of the best machinery, flaunting their secret in front of huge crowds and live television cameras. But no matter how fast they drove, they couldn’t outrun the law. As Randy came ever closer to reaching his dream of high-speed glory, one of the biggest drug scandals ever to hit the professional sports world was about to unfold.

• Racing with Rich Energy
  • Author: Elizabeth Blackstock
  • Release Date: 13 Oct 2022
  • Time Period: 2019
  • Summary: Formula One has long maintained a glitzy aura that masks dark and strange goings-on in the background. But with the 2019 season came a force louder than Formula One could dream of muffling: William Storey, the founder of British energy drink startup Rich Energy.

AUTO/BIOGRAPHICAL

• Fangio: The Life Behind the Legend
  • Author: Gerald Donaldson
  • Release Date: 7 May 2009
  • Time Period: 1911-1995
  • Summary: Juan Manuel Fangio’s name is indelibly inscribed in the record books and many consider him to be the greatest driver in history. It was 46 years before his record of five World Championships was beaten, but even now he is still remembered for an exceptional Formula 1 career which contained some of the greatest displays of skill and daring ever seen. Few though know of his almost super-human exploits in epic South American road races that made competition at the pinnacle of motor sport seem like child’s play. Gerald Donaldson chronicles not only those arduous early competitions but also his long journey from humble origins in remote Argentina to the lofty heights of international celebrity.

• Adventure on Wheels: The Autobiography of a Road Racing Champion
  • Author: John Fitch
  • Release Date: 1 Jan 1959
  • Time Period: 1917-2012
  • Summary: A first person narrative of the exciting life of a real American hero from his war time adventures to his time racing for Mercedes Benz.

• Best Damn Garage in Town: The World According to Smokey
  • Author: Smokey Yunick
  • Release Date: 1 Jul 2001
  • Time Period: 1923-2001
  • Summary: Smokey got the idea for writing a history of stock car racing after giving a talk to explain racing to a group of kids at Lowes Motorspeedway, around 1995. He realized that all the people who were a part of the early days were dying and most of the ones who were still alive were too involved with racing to be able to tell the real stories. He started writing this book as a history of stock car racing and ended up with look at American history of the past 60 years through a very unique set of eyes.

• The Boy: Stirling Moss: A Life in 60 Laps
  • Author: Richard Williams
  • Release Date: 12 May 2022
  • Time Period: 1929-2020
  • Summary: As the long years of war began to recede, sport in Britain was getting moving again and there was a need for heroes. Denis Compton and Stanley Matthews were in their pomp, playing to packed houses. But Stirling Moss was a fresh face, just 17 years old when he first emerged in 1947. Too young to have served and been scarred by the war, he was soon revealed to possess not only an unearthly degree of skill but the qualities of courage and resolution noted in the generation that fought in the air and on land and sea. Their youth had been stolen; his was new and unspoiled. The Boy explains how and why he came to occupy such a unique place in the esteem and the affections of the nation. Why him, rather than some of his contemporaries, such as Mike Hawthorn and Peter Collins , who shared a role in the rise of Britain as a power in international motor racing? Moss may never have been world champion, but he created a remarkable and enduring legacy, and Williams brilliantly shows just how he did it.

• The Unfair Advantage
  • Author: Mark Donohue
  • Release Date: 1 Sep 2000
  • Time Period: 1937-1975
  • Summary: In 1974, Mark Donohue took a year off from driving at the height of his racing career to write “The Unfair Advantage,” a candid and revealing book about his journey through the world of auto racing — from amateur SCCA races in his own ’57 Corvette to winning the Indy 500 in Roger Penske’s McLaren M16. This new edition contains over 60 additional photographs and comments from people who worked and raced with Donohue during the 1960s and early 1970s.

WOMEN IN MOTORSPORT

• Bugatti Queen: In Search of a French Racing Legend
  • Author: Miranda Seymour
  • Release Date: 1 Jan 2005
  • Time Period: 1900-1984
  • Summary: THE BUGATTI QUEEN is the beautifully illustrated story of an indomitable and fascinating woman, a pioneer of motorsport who revelled in danger. Born in 1900 in a tiny French village, Helene Delangle, aka Helle Nice, became a dancer and a stripper before catching the eye of Ettore Bugatti. Seduced by the combination of machines and speed, Helle Nice went on to have an unprecedented career, competing in numerous Grands Prix and becoming the only woman to drive on the treacherous American speedbowls in the 1930s. She set new land-speed records before a notorious accident which almost ended her racing days. Re-creating her rollercoaster career with authority and panache from many previously unpublished sources, Miranda Seymour reveals the story of an unforgettable life and sheds new light on the extraordinary and reckless world of motor-racing between the wars.

• Roberta Cowell’s Story: An Autobiography
  • Author: Roberta Cowell
  • Release Date: 1993
  • Time Period: 1918-2011
  • Summary: First published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

• The First Lady of Dirt: The Triumphs and Tragedy of Racing Pioneer Cheryl Glass
  • Author: Bill Poehler
  • Release Date: 6 Feb 2024
  • Time Period: 1961-1997
  • Summary: The First Lady of Dirt tells the incredible, little-known story of one of the most promising race car drivers in the United States who defied the odds as a Black woman in the sport of auto racing to find success, but whose life came crashing down after repeated run-ins with authorities and struggles with mental illness before her death at age 35.

DIVERSITY IN MOTORSPORT

• The Brown Bullet: Rajo Jack’s Drive to Integrate Auto Racing
  • Author: Bill Poehler
  • Release Date: 5 May 2020
  • Time Period: 1905-1956
  • Summary: The powers-that-be in 1920s auto racing, namely the American Automobile Association’s Contest Board, barred everyone who wasn’t a white male from the sport. But Dewey Gatson, a black man who went by the name Rajo Jack, drove into the center of “outlaw” auto racing in California, refusing to let the pervasive racism of his day stop him from competing against entire fields of white drivers. In The Brown Bullet, journalist Bill Poehler uncovers the life of a long-forgotten trailblazer and the great lengths he took to even get on the track, showing ultimately how Rajo Jack proved to a generation that a black man could compete with some of the greatest white drivers of his era, winning some of the biggest races of the day.

• Hard Driving: The Wendell Scott Story
  • Author: Brian Donovan
  • Release Date: 3 Aug 2021
  • Time Period: 1921-1990
  • Summary: The only book-length account of the life of Wendell Scott, the one-time moonshine runner who broke the color barrier in stock-car racing in 1952 and, against all odds, competed for more than 20 years in a sport dominated by Southern whites.

GRAND PRIX/F1

• Cars at Speed
  • Author: Robert Delay
  • Release Date: 1 Jan 2007
  • Time Period: 1950s-1960s
  • Summary: A rare opportunity to travel back in time to racings golden era, Cars at Speed offers a fascinating look at a time when danger and passion defined racing. Daley discusses the Grand Prix circuits of that era–e.g., Nu00fcrburgring, Monza, Silverstone, Zandvoort, Spa, Monaco–detailing the qualities, history, great races, controversies, and accidents of each. He focuses on the stories of drivers such as the Marquis de Portago, Phil Hill, Stirling Moss, and Jean Behra, among others, recreating the mythical quality of the Grand Prix in its prime.

• The Limit: Life and Death on the 1961 Grand Prix Circuit
  • Author: Michael Cannell
  • Release Date: 4 Dec 2012
  • Time Period: 1961
  • Summary: With the pacing and vivid description of a novel, The Limit charts the journey that brought Hill from dusty California lots racing midget cars into the ranks of a singular breed of men, competing with daredevils for glory on Grand Prix tracks across Europe. Facing death at every turn, these men rounded circuits at well over 150 mph in an era before seat belts or roll bars-an era when drivers were “crushed, burned, and beheaded with unnerving regularity.”

NASCAR

• Driving with the Devil: Southern Moonshine, Detroit Wheels, and the Birth of NASCAR
  • Author: Neal Thompson
  • Release Date: 28 Aug 2007
  • Time Period: 1920s-later
  • Summary: In the Depression-wracked South, with few options beyond the factory or farm, a Ford V-8 became the ticket to a better life. Bootlegging offered speed, adventure, and wads of cash. Driving with the Devil reveals how the skills needed to outrun federal agents with a load of corn liquor transferred perfectly to the red-dirt racetracks of Dixie. In this dynamic era (the 1930s and ’40s), three men with a passion for Ford V-8s—convicted felon Raymond Parks, foul-mouthed mechanic Red Vogt, and war veteran Red Byron, NASCAR’s first champ—emerged as the first stock car “team.” Theirs is the violent, poignant story of how moonshine and fast cars merged to create a sport for the South to call its own.

MOTORCYCLE

• The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey
  • Author: Che Guevara
  • Release Date: 16 July 2021
  • Time Period: 1952
  • Summary: The Motorcycle Diaries is Che Guevara’s diary of his journey to discover the continent of Latin America while still a medical student, setting out in 1952 on a vintage Norton motorcycle together with his friend Alberto Granado, a biochemist. It captures, arguably as much as any book ever written, the exuberance and joy of one person’s youthful belief in the possibilities of humankind tending towards justice, peace and happiness.

• Hells Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs
  • Author: Hunter S. Thompson
  • Release Date: 1967
  • Time Period: 1967
  • Summary: A phalanx of motorcycles cam roaring over the hill from the west …the noise was like a landslide, or a wing of bombers passing over. Even knowing the Angels I couldn’t quite handle what I was seeing.’ Huge bikes, filthy denim and an aura of barely contained violence; the Hell’s Angels could paralyze whole towns with fear, so terrible was their reputation. But how much of that reputation was myth and how much was brutal reality? Only one man could discover the truth about these latter-day barbarians; Hunter Stockton Thompson, Dr Gonzo himself, the man who saw the fear and loathing in the heart of the American dream. This counter-culture classic is the hair-raising result.

If you’d like to nominate another book, please contact us!