DWD's Reviews

  Published by Octane Press in September of 2020. I thoroughly enjoyed this autobiography because John Andretti was my favorite race car driver - period.  I have watched auto racing for as long as I can remember. Some of my earliest memories are going to qualifications for the Indy 500. I have Janet Guthrie's autograph - not realizing when I got it that it was actually an amazing autograph to have. The sound of a single car circling the track with the roar and whine of the engine (it has both sounds at the same time) echoing off of the stands makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. The history at that track cannot be topped by any other venue in the world. I attended my first NASCAR race at Michigan in 1981 with my father. The spectacle of the whole thing was amazing. It was won by my favorite driver at the time, Richard Petty. In 1986, we went to our first Indy 500 and haven't missed one since (the 2020 race doesn't count since no spectators were allowed due to Cov...

Published by Amazon Publishing in 2017. Janet Guthrie becomes the first woman to qualify for the Indy 500 in 1977. Every racing fan has heard of Danica Patrick. She raced successfully for seven years in IndyCar, raced in 8 Indy 500s (with 6 top ten finishes) and 7 years in NASCAR (with less success). Long before Danica there was Janet Guthrie - a true pioneer in motorsports. This short kindle book puts Guthrie's achievement in context in two ways. First, it details how truly startling it was to the drivers at the top levels of NASCAR and IndyCar for a woman to show up and try to add a little diversity to the field. Drivers that I always looked up to, like Richard Petty, said startlingly sexist comments about Guthrie. The second way the book puts Guthrie's achievement in context is the more important one.  The author, Stephan Talty, describes how Guthrie worked her way up the ranks, tore apart engines, suspensions and body work and worked on her cars in her spare time as...

Published by Blackstone Audio in 2013 Read by Robertson Dean Duration: 17 hours, 23 minutes Unabridged Winston Groom, the author of Forrest Gump , has delivered an impressive triple biography of three of America's aviation pioneers with The Aviators . The book focuses on Eddie Rickenbacker (1890-1973), auto racer turned World War I flying ace, Jimmy Doolittle (1896-1993), test pilot and the first person to perform a landing using only instruments (this sounds sort of mundane but it meant that planes could take fly in all sorts of weather - not just on clear days), and the world famous Charles Lindbergh (1902-1974) - the first man to fly solo over the Atlantic in an airplane and a truly international celebrity. Charles Lindbergh (right) with a P-38 on an island in the South Pacific during World War II in 1944. Each of these men had very different personalities but each shared a passion for being in the air. Charles Lindbergh is by far the most famous of the three, even...

A Total Joy  Published in 2011 by Simon and Schuster Full disclosure: I am a huge fan of the Indy 500. I have been to every 500 since 1986 and I live within earshot of the track. I have whiled away many a day at the track watching qualifications, practice or just going through the gift shop during the winter when the track is silent. Charles Leerhsen's recounting of the first few years of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is an interesting, fun and controversial book. What is interesting? An ad from a San Francisco newspaper bragging that the Marmon Wasp won the Indy 5000. Note the inclusion of the riding mechanic even though Harroun did not have one. Leerhsen tells the story of early 1900s Indianapolis, the beginnings of America's automobile culture, auto racing and the construction of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in a nearly seamless manner so that it all becomes one large story. It is a story of inspired (crazy?) businessmen, a fascination with what is ...

Before You Try to Impress Your Friends with All of Your New-Found Factoids, Verify Them  Published by Adams Media in 2011 This book was a first for me in a way. Fact. Fact. Bullsh*t! was the first book I ever read on my phone thanks to the Kindle app for my android phone. In a way, this book was made for reading on a little phone screen. It is entirely composed of a topic with three "facts" that follow. After that the reader will find out that at least one of those "facts" will be correct and at least one will be incorrect, or bullsh*t as the title notes. The  facts and the bullsh*t answers are explained. This makes for fairly interesting short-term reading but it is not built for the long haul. This would be a great book to have for standing in line at the bank or if you have to wait for a bus or a train because you can get in and out of a topic in just a few minutes. But...some of Stewart's facts are more factual than others. For example, he inco...

Jack Arute (center)  joking with Tony Kanaan Jack Arute's first Indy 500 was in 1969 as an 18-year-old spectator. His family owns a track in the Northeast and racing is in his blood. His dad passed down a love for the Indy 500 in particular. In Jack Arute's Tales from Indy 500 , Arute only tells stories from 1969 to the present (2004 in the hardback version, 2005 in the paperback version). Nothing too complicated and a real fun read, especially if you want to re-live some of the more exciting, interesting and sad moments from the last 35 years or so. I'd recommend the paperback version over the hardback since it has been expanded to include the 2005 race - the race where Danica Patrick became a household name. This is a quick read - I finished it in just one evening, but to be fair, I did read into the wee hours of the morning because the stories were that much fun. I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: ...

A must for Indy 500 fans Part of a series of DVDs produced by the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, this collection reviews all of the races from 1970-1979, including A.J. Foyt's famed and unprecedented fourth win. The collection features original TV & radio commentary, sound and video and lots of interviews with the drivers. Some of the interviews are from the 1970s and some are from nowadays looking back. Janet Guthrie Indianapolis 500: (The 70's A decade Of Legends) Collectors Edition is more than mindless promotion of the race - the lowlights (1973) are exposed along with the controversy associated with the arrival of Janet Guthrie, the first female participant in the 500. Changes with racing technology is highlighted throughout. DVD features include collecting all of the bits and pieces of interviews with several drivers and some owners and adding a few bonus bits. Rick Mears and Roger Penske are especially strong interviews. Well done. 5 stars ou...

    A NASCAR legend deserves better Cale Yarborough's famed 28 car in the 1980s Published in 2008 by Triumph Books. Cale Yarborough is a living symbol of NASCAR from its beginnings to the very creation of the dizzying heights that it has achieved nowadays. Sadly, most of the Johnny-Come-Lately fans have no idea, or at best, only a very dim idea who he is. Sadly, this biography of Cale Yarborough, They Call Him Cale: The Life and Career of NASCAR Legend Cale Yarborough , only covers half of his career. Indeed, most of the book covers his life before NASCAR. There are only 203 pages in this biography and he joins NASCAR full-time on page 169. Considering that the last 11 pages discusses his retirement years, that leaves 23 pages to discuss his amazing run of 3 championships in a row, the famous fistfight at the 1979 Daytona 500, his decision to run a partial schedule for more than 7 years and his 11 year stint as team owner (just 5 pages for that). The book...

"There's nothing as mighty as this in the world." - Nigel Mansell, F1 champion, Indy 500 driver Part of a series of DVDs produced by the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Indianapolis 500 (The 90's) Collector's Edition reviews all of the races from 1990-1999. The collection features original TV & radio commentary, sound and video and lots of interviews with the drivers. Some of the interviews are from the 1990s and some are from nowadays looking back. The video is more than mindless promotion of the race - the lowlights (poor officiating in several races, for example) are exposed along with the controversy associated with the infamous CART-IRL split. The DVD features include collecting all of the bits and pieces of interviews with several individual drivers and some owners that were in the feature and showing them in a longer format and adding a few bonus bits. The interviews highlighting many of the family connections are especially strong, a...

The strong points are very strong but there are flaws Originally published in 2007 by Scribner. America, 1908 covers some of the key cultural, political, manufacturing and just plain odd events that happened in 1908 in the United States in an easy-to-read, often fun format. These include the Race to the North Pole, the New York to Paris automobile race, the introduction of the Model T, the last time the Cubs won the World Series for more than a century, the Wright Brothers proving to the world that they really could fly (and do it for hours, not just seconds) and a series of horrible race-based lynchings. While I enjoyed learning more about the Wright Brothers and the Model T, other parts seemed more than a bit skewed towards events in New York City (the Cubs win their last World Series and it's told from the point of view of the New York Giants?) and against rural areas and the South (the only references to the South are from newspapers mentioning events in NYC or ...

For racing fans of any stripe and any color Published in 2007 by Indiana University Press Todd Gould has written a number of articles and books on Indiana business and history. With For Gold and Glory: Charlie Wiggins and the African-American Racing Car Circuit he has addressed a fascinating time in racing history and Indiana history as well. The main focus is Charlie Wiggins , an African-American auto mechanic originally from Evansville, Indiana who moved to Indianapolis in 1922 to take advantage of the bustling (yet segregated) cultural and business climate around Indiana Avenue. At the same time, several Indianapolis businessmen (both black and white) are looking into starting up the Colored Speedway Association (CSA), a racing division for Blacks that was to be modeled after Negro League Baseball. The hope was to demonstrate that African-Americans were fully capable of driving high-performance racecars and create a groundswell that would cause the American Automobi...

One of James Alexander Thom's first published books - shows his potential and rookie problems. James Alexander Thom James Alexander Thom is one of my favorite authors. In my classroom I have had two of his books on my shelves and kids come to me looking for something to read I recommend those books first due to the power of the storytelling. Those that accept my recommendations concerning his books are never disappointed. Great stuff! While most of his books concern the frontier days of America's old Northwest Territory (Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, etc.), Spectator Sport concerns itself with the rain-shortened and deadly 1973 Indy 500. The race took part over the course of 3 days and was finally called after a little more than 300 miles due to rain and the fact that only 9 of the 33 starters were still on the track. Thom was at the race and the events inspired him to write this book and explore the motivations of race fans, violence on television and the...

Originally Published in 2010 by Lulu Press. As the month of May is coming close, this Indianapolis resident and attender of 25 straight Indy 500 races and all of the Brickyard 400s (17, I think) knows what it means to be in love with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. So, I picked up this book in order to see what another gigantic fan had to say about this experience. Charles West, unlike me, did not grow up visiting the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (my mother's parents lived just a few blocks from the main gate and I clearly remember attending several qualification days and hearing Tom Carnegie's sweet velvet baritone call out, "It's a neeeew traaaaack recoooord!")  Instead, West grew up in Texas and most of his memories were radio broadcasts and delayed TV broadcasts. He also clearly remembers seeing Johnny Rutherford's yellow Pennzoil Chaparral on display as a little boy - that hooked him. For me, it was hearing that distinctive whine of the engines in the...

Disappointing So,  Speedweeks: 10 Days At Daytona is yet another coffee table book. See, what it is is that I have a friend who knows I am a NASCAR fan so he didn't know what else to get me for Christmas so he got me 3 NASCAR books. One of them was this one and I was fairly disappointed, mostly due to the fact that the title does not accurately describe the book. Nor does it accurately describe Speedweeks, which lasts longer than 10 days. For example, the 2011 Speedweeks events have one event in early January and then really go hot and heavy for about 3 weeks beginning on January 27 and culminating in the Daytona 500 on February 20. See, Daytona Speedweeks is a racing happening. There are a dozen motorsports events, culminating in the Daytona 500. There's a 24 hour race, an ARCA race and literally a half-dozen NASCAR races. Check their website ! This book, however, focuses primarily on the Daytona 500 (90%) and barely mentions the other non-NASCAR events. In fact...

An enjoyable read from one of the true nice guys in American sports broadcasting I've listened to Eli Gold for years as one of the radio (and from time to time TV) voices of NASCAR. He's always come across as a nice guy and a straight shooter who is not out to grind any axes. From Peanuts to the Pressbox: Insider Sports Stories from a Life Behind the Mic is Eli Gold's story of how he went from being a peanut vendor at Madison Square Garden to being a nationally known sports announcer. Eli tells it in an entertaining, light-hearted style and keeps it classy by not airing anyone's dirty laundry. He does include lots of funny and interesting stories, including his tale of the day that he went to the airport with David Pearson, Bobby Allison's distinctive ritual when he flew his plane home after a win and the strangest thing Richard Petty ever signed (a duck!). The revelation that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is a big NASCAR fan who attends in his ow...

Fantastic. A must for Petty fans and fans of NASCAR history. Published in 2009 by Audiobook Publishing, LLC. 4 CDs Running time: approximately 4 hours Richard Petty sits down with his cousin and long-time crew chief Dale Inman (the only crew chief to win 8 championships) for a retrospective on their legendary careers with Barney Hall, the famed radio voice of NASCAR for 40 years on MRN. Barney begins the interview by having the two cousins tell about their early lives in rural North Carolina. They tell about how they got involved in Lee Petty's racing operation as part-time garage help after school and how, once Richard turned 21, they were able to start racing themselves. The give and take between these two cousins and, more importantly, long-time friends makes this a fun trip down memory lane. Petty's Dodge Charger,  a legendary ride As the interview moves along following Richard's career bits of audio from races are included as well as interviews with Ri...