Archive for Author 'Helen Hutchings', only excerpts shown, click title for full entry.
Norman Conquest, One Man’s Tale of High-Flying Adventures and a Life in the Fast Lane
by Vic Norman
For £399 he’ll let you try wingwalking for yourself, or you can spend £45 and just read about it and a hundred other unusual things. That Ferrari 250GTO Nick Mason owns? Used to be his—sold for £16,000. No regrets. Never had a proper job. How does he do it?
The Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild
by John L. Jacobus
Conceived during the Great Depression as a philanthropic project by the Fisher family, the Guild became one of the largest and longest-running youth-oriented design activities ever. The Guildsmen’s 2023 Reunion will be their last ever, so this is the time to read their stories once more.
Rails Around the World Two Centuries of Trains and Locomotives
by Brian Solomon
You’d be hard-pressed to encounter working steam locos next to record-breaking electric trains in real life so a book is the way to behold all that rich history. Just think: Solomon could have looked thousands of years back and found tracked transport.
George Westinghouse, Powering the World
by William R. Huber
His teachers thought he was mentally disabled. He quit college, but he received his first patent at the age of 19. Hundreds more would follow and he became a captain of industry, his 60-odd companies providing paychecks to tens of thousands and changing the world.
Eastern Air Lines: A History, 1926–1991
by David Lee Russell
Once upon a time Eastern was the most profitable airline in the postwar era. It became Walt Disney World’s official airline. Then: strikes, fuel crisis, deregulation, management shake-ups—bankruptcy.
Le Mans 100, A Century at the World’s Greatest Endurance Race
by Glen Smale
The 24 Hours of Le Mans is one of the three legs of the Triple Crown of Motorsports. What makes it so special? Smale has wrangled each and every race up to the 2023 running into the pages of one concise, nicely illustrated, and well-designed book.
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?