Archive for Author 'Helen Hutchings', only excerpts shown, click title for full entry.

The Man and Car that Circled the Globe

by G. N. Schuster and J. Mahl

Forget the 1965 movie The Great Race. This book tells and shows what it was really like back in 1908, when traveling 22,000 miles in 169 days was as untried as space travel to Mars is today.

Crusader, John Cobb’s Ill-Fated Quest for Speed on Water 

by Steve Holter

For what do you need 5000 lb of thrust? For breaking records. In a jet-powered boat. Air is relatively smooth, water is not. Will it all go right? The author is, among other things, a crash investigator—so probably not.

Dreamers

by Cornelis van den Berg

If you dream about going into car manufacturing, look at these guys. One of them had actually done it for real—TAD Crook aka “Mr. Bristol.” Long retired, he sat for an interview, from which is spun this narrative nonfiction the publisher calls “accurate, but not always factual.”

America’s Greatest Road Trip!

by Tom Cotter and Michael Alan Ross

A couple thousand miles, a couple thousand photos and, hey presto, a book! And for once he’s not on the trail of the next barn find. Initially he thought he’d drive an ‘80s Corvette. That would have been a whole different trip! Instead a brand-new Ford Bronco and Airstream trailer—provided free by their respective makers—do the honors.

Flying with the SPOOKS, Memoir of a Navy Linguist in the Vietnam War

by Herbert P. Shippey

“Join the Navy and see the world!” The U.S. Navy is probably not the first armed service that springs to mind when you think Vietnam—in fact, many people joined the Navy specifically to avoid going there. Navy SIGINT has not been covered extensively and much info was classified for 40 years.

Fast Lady, The Extraordinary Adventures of Miss Dorothy Levitt

by Michael W. Barton

“The Fastest Girl on Earth” had plenty of adventures in life but an inquest ruled her death of morphine poisoning at 40 a misadventure. What good is it to be the first British woman racing driver, the world’s first holder of a water speed record, the first woman to hold a land speed record if no one remembers?

OBD-I & OBD-II, A Complete Guide to Diagnosis, Repair, and Emissions Compliance  

by Greg Banish

Are you the sort of person who puts masking tape over that annoying Check Engine light? If your car has an ECU, realize that more and more states require a recent OBD-reader analysis in order to renew registration.

Pan Am Ferry Tales: A World War II Aviation Memoir

by W. Gordon Schmitt

Ferrying supplies, personnel, and aircraft to far-flung corners of the globe is expensive and complicated. PAA already had the know-how and the infrastructure when the US decided that Africa and Egypt were of supreme strategic importance to the war effort. Here, a navigator looks back.

Junkyards, Gearheads & Rust

by David N. Lucsko

The author is a hands-on enthusiast and restorer but also an academic. This book is less about parts picking or hunting for treasure but the junkyard as purgatory for automobiles, a stage of limbo from which will some will go on to be crushed, and some saved. One practical finding: scarcity does not necessarily equate collectibility.

Good Connections, A Century of Service by the Men & Women of Southwestern Bell

by David G. Park Jr.

Once upon a time, telephones were connected directly in pairs by wire. Obviously inconvenient and self-limiting. Telephone exchanges, local loops, trunk lines—all words the modern cellphone user has never heard. This book brings you up to speed.

Virginia Bader, A Collage of Memories of the First Lady of Aviation Art

by Jill Amadio

A pioneering force in aviation art, not as an artist but a dealer / gallerist, especially of prints signed by the artists and where possible, the pilots. Later, she was the first organizer of symposia that connected artists and their public.

Racing With Roger Penske, A History of a Motorsport Dynasty

by Sigur E. Whitaker

Dynasty implies succession but The Captain, after several years as a race car driver, built his empire from scratch and is still involved in many of its aspects. “Most successful” describes most his accomplishments, and this book seems much too small to do them justice.

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