The Right Stuff of the "Brickyard"-the name given by the racers to the fabled Indianapolis Speedway-is chronicled in Against Death and Time, for one fatal season, 1955, in the post-war glory years of racecar driving. This book tells the story of the reckless, dispossessed young men who raced not for fame or money-there was none-but for "the sheer unvarnished hell of it." Brock Yates has been writing for Car and Driver for more than thirty years and is one of the best-known people in the racing world. He raced his own car for a season in a Plimpton-like adventure recorded in Sunday Driver, one of his six books. He has published widely, from Playboy to the Wall Street Journal, and has appeared on every major television network as both a racing and automotive industry commentator. An evocative writer with an absolute command of the period, Brock integrates unexpected and fascinating detail into a character-driven story of men compelled to compete against themselves, time, and death. Brock's Dutch-like strategy of a fictional narrator observing, interrogating, and reporting on his real-life protagonists imparts the immediacy of fiction to this minutely accurate account. Black-and-white photographs are featured.
Description:
The Right Stuff of the "Brickyard"-the name given by the racers to the fabled Indianapolis Speedway-is chronicled in Against Death and Time, for one fatal season, 1955, in the post-war glory years of racecar driving. This book tells the story of the reckless, dispossessed young men who raced not for fame or money-there was none-but for "the sheer unvarnished hell of it." Brock Yates has been writing for Car and Driver for more than thirty years and is one of the best-known people in the racing world. He raced his own car for a season in a Plimpton-like adventure recorded in Sunday Driver, one of his six books. He has published widely, from Playboy to the Wall Street Journal, and has appeared on every major television network as both a racing and automotive industry commentator. An evocative writer with an absolute command of the period, Brock integrates unexpected and fascinating detail into a character-driven story of men compelled to compete against themselves, time, and death. Brock's Dutch-like strategy of a fictional narrator observing, interrogating, and reporting on his real-life protagonists imparts the immediacy of fiction to this minutely accurate account. Black-and-white photographs are featured.
From Publishers Weekly
In this engaging history, racing journalist Yates narrates one of professional sports car racing's worst years, 1955. In a time before fairly rigorous safety standards for racing cars—roll bars were just coming into use, there were no seat belts but primitive safety harnesses—and no safety standards for racing tracks, race car drivers raced for the thrill of speed with a gritty competitive spirit unparalleled in today's sport. Yates, editor-at-large for Car and Driver magazine, chronicles the colorful cast of characters who filled the straightaways and hairpin turns of tracks from the Indy 500 to Le Mans by creating a fictional persona who interviews each of the racers, has an affair with a racetrack groupie, and who even drives fast with reckless abandon. For part of the book he follows the career of Bill Vukovich, the "Mad Russian," whose tenacity and determination led him to two straight Indy wins before his fiery death there in 1955. Vukovich's death begins a season of carnage at tracks around the world, including the deaths of over 100 spectators at Le Mans when several cars crashed, throwing steel and tire debris into the crowd. As a result of the 1955 season, the racing profession instituted more and more safety regulations for drivers, cars and tracks, so that today's races are pale imitations of the roaring, bone-throttling, and often deadly races of the 1950s. While some will object to Yates's strategy of using a fictional narrator to tell these stories, his own research doesn't falter, and race fans will be pleased with his exciting history of the sport's past.
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From Booklist
The year 1955 saw a tragic convergence of high-octane auto technology and an overall disdain in America and Europe for auto safety--all of which resulted in the deaths that year of seven preeminent race-car drivers, actor James Dean, and some 83 spectators attending Le Mans. Using a fictional journalist as his narrator, Yates, author of numerous books on auto racing, delivers a vivid, nonfiction portrait of the drivers and their times during this "fatal season": dirt tracks so primitive that drivers would bite down on rags to keep their teeth from rattling loose; a concern for safety so casual that racers would drive wearing street clothes and leather helmets (maybe seatbelts, maybe not); behemoth cars with fatally clunky handling; and drivers not overly concerned about their high mortality rates. All that would change in the years that followed, as Yates explains. The author, though, seems almost wistful over that lost time, quoting Parnelli Jones at the end of the book: "If you're under control, you're not trying hard enough." An excellent account for the sport's many followers. Alan Moores
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