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

An AUTObiography

by Charles Howard

After some 65 years of “loving cars” UK vintage-car dealer Charles Howard figures he has a thing or two to tell the world—about cars in particular and life in general.

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?

Il Mio Drake

by Lycia Mezzacappa

The Barber of Maranello tells all! Well, no, but the book does reveal an unknown side of the notoriously private Enzo Ferrari, not least because they saw each other six mornings a week.

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.

Béla Barényi: Pioneer of Passive Safety at Mercedes-Benz

by Harry Niemann

Born into the age of the horseless carriage young Barényi had a knack for engineering and an uncommonly acute awareness of unintended safety hazards—so he built himself a racing sleigh with a padded steering wheel! One of his many innovations may well have saved your life.

Roger Williamson: A Collection of Memories from Friends, Mechanics, Rivals and Family

by K. Guthrie & D. Banks

The F1 cars of Williamson’s era were getting faster and faster but neither the tracks nor safety consciousness evolved at pace. His horrific death in a fire at the 1973 Dutch GP is a chilling example of Murphy’s Law at full tilt.

Kim: A Biography of M.G. Founder Cecil Kimber

by Jon Pressnell

This epic book is less about the cars than the man behind them, and in this case especially you cannot appreciate the former without the latter. Pressnell leaves no stone unturned to present a multi-faceted picture of a complicated man who took the firm to the loftiest of heights—only to be fired.

Jock Lewes, Co-Founder of the SAS

by John Lewes

This early admirer of Hitler became so disillusioned with the Nazi regime’s methods that he volunteered for an elite British outfit specializing in counter-espionage, the Special Air Service and became its principal training officer.

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.

Bourne to Rally: Possum Bourne, The Autobiography

by Possum Bourne with Paul Owen

The fickle finger of fate . . . this autobiography was completed just days before 47-year-old Bourne had a fatal road accident. While that makes the story especially poignant, there’s a lot of practical stuff here how to keep a racing career humming: talent is essential but not sufficient by itself.

Wheels Within Wheels, An Unconventional Life

by Lord Montagu of Beaulieu

The name of Beaulieu looms large in British history, and not just in a motoring context although the clever book title so obviously alludes to it. His life would have been unconventional even without the law he changed, not as a lawmaker but as a defendant.

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.

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