Archive for Author 'Donald Capps', only excerpts shown, click title for full entry.

Napalm: An American Biography

by Robert M. Neer

Horrible stuff. And horribly effective. This is a disturbing examination of the disconnect between technocratic progress and morals and the laws of war. What ends justify such nightmarish means?

The Grand Prix Saboteurs

by Joe Saward

The idea of racing drivers having a side gig as secret agents seems the stuff of fantasy—but it really did happen. Telling that story was long overdue—but the book has become a victim of almost two decades worth of research struggling to remain intelligible.

Stardust International Raceway

by Randall Cannon and Michael Gerry

Legendary drivers, the FBI, Howard Hughes…it’s a big story but the track was short-lived and pretty much forgotten until two local boys with racing interests put this fine book together.

Ferraris in Australia in the 1950s and 1960s

by Barry Farr

Some US metropolitan areas have larger populations of Ferraris than the 65 examples of sports, race or road cars that went Down Under between 1952 and 1972 when the Australian Ferrari Register was founded. The author is a native and a Ferrari owner and so has the motivation and the connections to trace the cars.

Born to Be Wild

by Randy D. McBee

Bikers—menace to society or upstanding citizens? Want to look at motorcycling from a scholarly point of view? If class, race, gender, sexual orientation, stereotypes, and politics interest you as much as cubic inches and spark plug gaps, this is the book.

Shutter & Speed

by Gary Critcher

If the title puts “photography” and “racing” into your mind you’re on the right track. Lots of behind the scenes stuff in this first of two compilations.

Early Australian Automotive Design: The First Fifty Years

by Norm Darwin

The automotive industry is one of the most significant Australian industries of the twentieth century. It began around 1895—and only now is there a comprehensive account of the design side of it, not just overall styling but component/industrial design.

Auto Racing Comes of Age

by Robert Dick

It is nothing short of amazing that the transition from rickety horseless carriage you could outrun on foot to fire-snorting record-breaking racecar took so little time. This excellent book examines the European and American history of the origins of motorsports.

City of Speed: Los Angeles and the Rise of American Racing

by Joe Scalzo

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but fact and the correct application thereof is not. The subject matter makes sense, the author is known. All should be well. This 2007 book was lauded by everyone; we beg to differ.

1 1/2-litre Grand Prix Racing 1961–65 – Low Power, High Tech

by Mark Whitelock

Period photos, cutaway drawings, racing stats and venues, drivers and teams—all put together by someone who paid attention at the time only to grow disappointed by later forms of GP racing. This book is his sympathetic reappraisal of a complicated era.

1982: The Inside Story of the Sensational Grand Prix Season

by Christopher Hilton

A multitude of factors conspired to make the 1982 season exceptionally turbulent and trying. Political wrangling, a driver’s strike at the first race, fatal crashes, a rather unexpected champion and more, more, more. The book is ten years old but remains a shining beacon.

World Championship

by Gregor J. Grant

The author of the iconic The Boy’s Book of Motor Sport also had his adult audience covered, with books and a weekly magazine that followed motor racing in a serious, data-intensive way.