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

Paul Frère, My Life Full of Cars: Behind the Wheel with the World’s Top Motoring Journalist

by Paul Frère

He drove in eleven F1 GPs. Teamed with fellow Belgian Olivier Gendebien, he won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in a Ferrari in 1960. He had an influence on three generations of automotive writers and here you can read why and how.

Walter Röhrl Diary: Memories of a World Champion

by Röhrl, Müller, Klein

“I didn’t really know why I was so fast and it didn’t really interest me.” Not exactly the words one would expect from the 1980 and 1982 World Rally Champion, a veritable legend in his field who was voted by his peers Driver of the Millennium (2000).

Flying Freestyle: An RAF Fast Jet Pilot’s Story

by Jerry Pook

This is a book for real flying enthusiasts. Jerry Pook has that ability as a writer to describe his remarkable flying experiences in a dramatic way that puts you in the cockpit with him during his many varied missions.

Edoardo Bianchi, 1885–1964

by Antonio Gentile

Bicyclists will instantly relate the Bianchi name to famous professional racing and mountain bikes. Artists may remember that Picasso had a Bianchi bicycle in his studio and thought of it as “one of the most beautiful sculptures in the history of art.”

Big Sid’s Vincati: The Story of a Father, a Son, and the Motorcycle of a Lifetime

by Matthew Biberman

Biberman’s first motorized two-wheeler was a Schwinn bicycle powered by a Whizzer kit paid for with money from his bar mitzvah. The feeling of “moving effortlessly through space” on his bike set the course for his life.

The Art of Dexter Brown

by Robert Edwards

This biography in words and pictures in the publisher’s fine series on automobile art coincided with an exhibition of the artist’s “The Way We Were” series of some 50 paintings at the John Noot Galleries in England in October 2001. Brown was present at the gallery opening to sign copies of this book.

Of Firebirds & Moonmen: A Designer’s Story from the Golden Age

by Norman J James

If you were a newly-minted designer in the 1950s, the place you would want to go to work would be GM. Legendary Harley Earl ran his design division as his own private fiefdom, and his Knight’s Errant were his designers.

1965: Jim Clark & Team Lotus, The UK Races

by William Taylor

A 208-page large-format book about just eleven race weekends that took place 45 years ago in England seems fairly indulgent. But when the subject of the book is the incomparable Jim Clark, and the year is 1965, it all makes sense.

Equations of Motion: Adventure, Risk and Innovation

by William F Milliken

You’ve heard the saying about someone having “forgotten more than the rest of us will ever know.” This certainly applies to Bill Milliken, except that he hasn’t forgotten anything! He was 95 years old when he published the first version of this autobiography, the hardcover edition.

Equations of Motion: Adventure, Risk and Innovation

by William F Milliken

When the first edition of Equations of Motion was released in 2006, I wrote in a published review that it was unequivocally “the most interesting and well-written of the 50-some-odd books that I’d read during all of that year.” Now, with the publication of the 2nd edition, this time in softcover, you get more for less.

The Man Who Supercharged Bond: The Extraordinary Story of Charles Amherst Villiers

by Paul Kenny

The Bond in the title is “Bond, James Bond”, created by Ian Fleming who was a friend of Villiers. Naturally, Fleming chose a Villiers-supercharged W.O. Bentley for Bond in his book Casino Royale that was later made into the iconic film of the same name.

The Miller Dynasty

by Mark L Dees

Inspired by Griffith Borgeson’s work, fellow Californian Mark Dees began to seriously accumulate Miller lore, interviewing those still living who had known or worked with Miller, along with survivors from the prewar racing world.