Archive for Items Categorized 'Biography/ Autobiography', only excerpts shown, click title for full entry.

Sam’s Scrapbook: My Motorsports Memories

by Sam Posey with John Posey

“Pictures no one has seen and stories no one has heard” says the press release, and it’s mostly true. Pro racer for 17 seasons, broadcaster, raconteur, painter Sam “the Mouth” Posey holds forth once more. He’s 77 and still tearing around his property on his Hammerhead dune buggy. Expect to be entertained.

A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Century

by Witold Rybczynski

Olmsted was already dead by the time transportation systems became the arteries of modern life but a not entirely unrelated topic, conservation, which is certainly a pressing issue today, found in him an early advocate and activist. You’ve trod in his footsteps and may not even have known it.

Driven: The Men Who Made Formula One

by Kevin Eason

A colorful look by a long-time observer at the forces that turned a sport into a circus in which staggering amounts of money are to be made by those few who already have money—or genius or luck or connections—to even get a seat at the table.

Tom Tjaarda: Master of Proportions

by Gautam Sen

From Ferraris to furniture and tires to typewriters, Tjaarda left a mark, a big mark, and it takes a big book to tell it all. Tjaarda was very keen to have this author write that book, but he didn’t live to see it finished.

The Swiss Wiz: Edi Wyss, Ein Leben mit Renn- und Sportwagen

by Edi Wyss and Christoph Ditzler

If you travel in certain circles you know this name. Even with a couple hundred well-captioned photos of cars and places you’ll recognize, you’ll wish you spoke German and hear him tell his story in his own voice.

Jas A Munro & Co – The Largest Garage in Melbourne

by Ian Berg

One of the largest motor agents in Australia, Munro also ran a service and coachbuilding facility, adding a host of other businesses over time. The chance discovery of the Munro archive, unseen for nearly a century, sheds light on early motoring in a harsh country.

Colin Chapman: Wayward Genius

by Mike Lawrence

The title hints at the dichotomy in the Lotus founder’s character but the book makes an effort to show that Chapman compartmentalized his waywardness: questionable morals as a friend and businessman but (almost) never in motorsports.

The Boy: Stirling Moss, A Life in 60 Laps

by Richard Williams

The era-defining British racing driver died in 2020, which will surely spawn a plethora of commemorative books. Williams’ is the first, and, taking a fresh approach, it sets a high bar.

Foyt, Andretti, Petty: America’s Racing Trinity 

by Bones Bourcier

In the 100-year history of American motorsports there’s one particularly fertile period when the careers of several drivers bloomed and overlapped before becoming so big that today they are household names.

Die Jean Bugatti Story, Eine Dokumentation

by Horst Schultz

Ettore Bugatti’s eldest son was groomed to be the future patron, but he died young. This book makes the point that he influenced both the era before his death and the one/s after it much more than other books allow.

A Race with Love and Death

by Richard Williams

A young English aristocrat won the 1938 German Grand Prix—as a works driver for Mercedes-Benz, selected by Hitler himself—and became a Nazi hero! There’s plenty of drama right there, and that’s not even scratching the surface.

Tom Pryce: Memories of a Welsh F1 Star by Those Who Knew Him

by Darren Banks and Kevin Guthrie 

The Welsh Dragon was active in F1 only a few years and was thought to have the makings of a future world champion, and then a grotesquely bizarre chain of events claimed his life on the track. He was missed then, and as this book shows, is more so now.

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