We Were the Ramchargers: Inside Drag Racing’s Legendary Team, 2nd Ed.

by Dave Rockwell

Passionate auto engineers don’t leave their day jobs behind in their free time but few went as deep into pro motorsports as this bunch of Chrysler engineers. The author, a Ramcharger himself, interviewed more than 40 team members, competitors, and track operators.

Happy Lucky Days – My Life in Racing 

by Bob Evans

Racing in the the glory days of F5000, Evans showed plenty of talent but as his entertaining and candid autobiography shows, scoring points and wins has a lot to do with factors outside a driver’s control.

Road Hogs

Detroit’s Big, Beautiful Luxury Performance Cars of the 1960s and 1970s

by Eric Peters

The combination of book title and cover photo—a car so big it spills off the page—is clever! Author Peters refers, rightly, to the big cars of those years as “totems of a different America” and his book as “a funeral dirge.”

Ed Pink, The Old Master

by Ed Pink with Bones Bourcier

There was a time, before crew chiefs, when engine builders were as famous as the star drivers because they saw to every aspect of a car’s performance. Having built thousands of engines, at 92, Pink has finally called it quits.

Flying and Preserving Historic Aircraft, The Memoirs of David Ogilvy

by David Ogilvy

Can’t tell roll from bank? Ever put a fuel-soaked rag into your carb intake to encourage combustion? Ever piloted a 1910 triplane, or the first British jet? Ogilvy’s highly polished prose will transport you into the cockpit.

Baillon Collection

by Rémi Dargegen

Looked at one car at a time, the Baillon Collection is interesting enough but it is the unique circumstances of it being found and brought to market that will forever make it the “find of the century.”

The Race to the Future: The Adventure That Accelerated the Twentieth Century

by Kassia St. Clair

Automobiles, electric lights, wireless telegraphy, the first synthetic plastic—everything is changing all at once. Ironic: The 8000-mile drive in 1907 from Peking to Paris happened at the same time newspapers touted “the triumph of the horse.”

Airway to the East 1918–1920 and the Collapse of No.1 Aerial Route RAF

by Clive Semple

The Arab-Israeli conflict is in the news every day. This book revisits a story related to it but buried since 1919 and deals with early long-distance flying in general.

Made in America, The Industrial Photography of Christopher Payne

by Christopher Payne

You may think the US has outsourced most of its manufacturing but in fact it is the world’s second-largest manufacturer. Still, it ain’t what it used to be, and while output is up, employment is down. But put all that aside and simply look at what’s happening on factory and shop floors.

Honda/Acura NSX: Honda’s Original Supercar

by Brian Long

Conceived as “the everyday supercar” the NSX delivered, often enough besting the higher-priced competition. The press and engineering folk loved it, the buying public not so much.

The Diesel Odyssey of Clessie Cummins

by C. Lyle Cummins Jr.

Cummins is not only the name behind the ubiquitous Cummins Diesel truck engine but also a world speed and endurance record holder. Readers with historical awareness will recognize in the publisher’s name a clever homage to Sadi Carnot, the brilliant young French scientist who is considered the father of thermodynamics.

Speed Queens, A Secret History of Women in Motorsports

by Rachel Harris-Gardiner

For almost ten years the author has run the Speedqueens blog, and it contains a lot of material. She has a plethora of stories to
tell, and while she crams too much information into this debut book, it also offers her and others great opportunities for further exploration.