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

Ferdinand Porsche, Genesis of Genius: Road, Racing and Aviation Innovation 1900 to 1933

by Karl Ludvigsen

For a paltry $100 you are getting a veritable education in matters political, economical, scientific, and psychological. It isn’t just about a precocious youth and ambitious engineer, but about the world and times he lived in.

Let ’Em All Go!

by Chris Economaki

A “must have” if you have any interest whatsoever in any aspect of motorsports. There are few who have seen as much, experienced as much, or spent as many years across all facets of the sport and business as Economaki.

The Brothers Rodríguez

by Carlos Eduardo Jalife-Villalón

This book tells us not only about Pedro’s life on the track, but it also traces his and his brother Ricardo’s rise from obscurity to international celebrity status, and ends with their untimely deaths.

Enrico Nardi, A Fast Life

by Dino Brunori, Andrea Curami

Enrico Nardi would probably be amused at the attention he continues to receive some 43 years after his death in 1966. More at home in the shop than in social situations, money, fame, or gold watches did not impress him much.

Phil Hill: Yankee Champion, First American to Win the Driving Championship of the World

by William F Nolan

Originally published in 1962 and out of print long enough to be worth some serious money in the collectable-book marketplace, this is a revised, updated and enhanced edition.

Bugatti Queen: In Search of a French Racing Legend

by Miranda Seymour

The protagonist of this book went from 1920s nude model, ballerina, and cabaret dancer to race driver, becoming the “fastest woman in the world.”

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 Motorsport 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.