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   Book Info

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Against Death and Time: One Fatal Season in Racing's Glory Years  
Author: Brock Yates
ISBN: 1560255269
Format: Handover
Publish Date: June, 2005
 
     
     
   Book Review


From Publishers Weekly
In this engaging history, racing journalist Yates narrates one of professional sports car racing's worst years, 1955. In a time before fairly rigorous safety standards for racing cars—roll bars were just coming into use, there were no seat belts but primitive safety harnesses—and no safety standards for racing tracks, race car drivers raced for the thrill of speed with a gritty competitive spirit unparalleled in today's sport. Yates, editor-at-large for Car and Driver magazine, chronicles the colorful cast of characters who filled the straightaways and hairpin turns of tracks from the Indy 500 to Le Mans by creating a fictional persona who interviews each of the racers, has an affair with a racetrack groupie, and who even drives fast with reckless abandon. For part of the book he follows the career of Bill Vukovich, the "Mad Russian," whose tenacity and determination led him to two straight Indy wins before his fiery death there in 1955. Vukovich's death begins a season of carnage at tracks around the world, including the deaths of over 100 spectators at Le Mans when several cars crashed, throwing steel and tire debris into the crowd. As a result of the 1955 season, the racing profession instituted more and more safety regulations for drivers, cars and tracks, so that today's races are pale imitations of the roaring, bone-throttling, and often deadly races of the 1950s. While some will object to Yates's strategy of using a fictional narrator to tell these stories, his own research doesn't falter, and race fans will be pleased with his exciting history of the sport's past. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Booklist
The year 1955 saw a tragic convergence of high-octane auto technology and an overall disdain in America and Europe for auto safety--all of which resulted in the deaths that year of seven preeminent race-car drivers, actor James Dean, and some 83 spectators attending Le Mans. Using a fictional journalist as his narrator, Yates, author of numerous books on auto racing, delivers a vivid, nonfiction portrait of the drivers and their times during this "fatal season": dirt tracks so primitive that drivers would bite down on rags to keep their teeth from rattling loose; a concern for safety so casual that racers would drive wearing street clothes and leather helmets (maybe seatbelts, maybe not); behemoth cars with fatally clunky handling; and drivers not overly concerned about their high mortality rates. All that would change in the years that followed, as Yates explains. The author, though, seems almost wistful over that lost time, quoting Parnelli Jones at the end of the book: "If you're under control, you're not trying hard enough." An excellent account for the sport's many followers. Alan Moores
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description
The Right Stuff of the "Brickyard"-the name given by the racers to the fabled Indianapolis Speedway-is chronicled in Against Death and Time, for one fatal season, 1955, in the post-war glory years of racecar driving. This book tells the story of the reckless, dispossessed young men who raced not for fame or money-there was none-but for "the sheer unvarnished hell of it." Brock Yates has been writing for Car and Driver for more than thirty years and is one of the best-known people in the racing world. He raced his own car for a season in a Plimpton-like adventure recorded in Sunday Driver, one of his six books. He has published widely, from Playboy to the Wall Street Journal, and has appeared on every major television network as both a racing and automotive industry commentator. An evocative writer with an absolute command of the period, Brock integrates unexpected and fascinating detail into a character-driven story of men compelled to compete against themselves, time, and death. Brock's Dutch-like strategy of a fictional narrator observing, interrogating, and reporting on his real-life protagonists imparts the immediacy of fiction to this minutely accurate account. Black-and-white photographs are featured.




Against Death and Time: One Fatal Season in Racing's Glory Years

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Against Death and Time is a chronicle of one fatal season, 1955, in the postwar glory years of racecar driving. It is the story of the reckless, dispossessed young men who raced not for fame or money - there was none - but for "the sheer unvarnished hell of it." Brock Yates has been writing about cars and drivers for more than thirty years and is one of the best-known people in the racing world. He raced his own car for a season in an adventure recorded in one of his six books, Sunday Driver. He has been widely published, from Playboy to the Wall Street Journal, and has appeared on every major television network as both a racing and automotive industry commentator. With an absolute command of the period, Brock tells of the larger-than-life characters compelled to compete against themselves, time, and death. Against Death and Time is based on interviews with dozens of surviving racers, car owners, mechanics, and historians, and Brock's own research in the archives of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the Detroit Public Library Auto Archive, United States Auto Club, Henry Ford Museum, Smithsonian Institute, and those of contemporaneous newspapers and periodicals. Brock's experience and reporting impart the immediacy of fiction to this minutely accurate account.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

In this engaging history, racing journalist Yates narrates one of professional sports car racing's worst years, 1955. In a time before fairly rigorous safety standards for racing cars-roll bars were just coming into use, there were no seat belts but primitive safety harnesses-and no safety standards for racing tracks, race car drivers raced for the thrill of speed with a gritty competitive spirit unparalleled in today's sport. Yates, editor-at-large for Car and Driver magazine, chronicles the colorful cast of characters who filled the straightaways and hairpin turns of tracks from the Indy 500 to Le Mans by creating a fictional persona who interviews each of the racers, has an affair with a racetrack groupie, and who even drives fast with reckless abandon. For part of the book he follows the career of Bill Vukovich, the "Mad Russian," whose tenacity and determination led him to two straight Indy wins before his fiery death there in 1955. Vukovich's death begins a season of carnage at tracks around the world, including the deaths of over 100 spectators at Le Mans when several cars crashed, throwing steel and tire debris into the crowd. As a result of the 1955 season, the racing profession instituted more and more safety regulations for drivers, cars and tracks, so that today's races are pale imitations of the roaring, bone-throttling, and often deadly races of the 1950s. While some will object to Yates's strategy of using a fictional narrator to tell these stories, his own research doesn't falter, and race fans will be pleased with his exciting history of the sport's past. (July) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

A veteran columnist at Car & Driver magazine, Yates relives 1955 in automotive racing a year in which crashes cost many lives of both drivers and spectators and nearly ended the sport. Assuming the role of a fictional narrator, he reminds us of plain-spoken heroism and the fragility of life via portraits of the various drivers that season. Yates interviewed dozens of surviving race drivers, widows, car owners, mechanics, and historians to develop his story. As it unfolds, we learn that the young drivers who rose to the top of the sport weren't so much reckless as fearless. Willing to drive at the ragged edge of control literally for the sheer hell of it, they possessed an uncanny ability to compartmentalize whatever fears they might have and superhuman concentration on the task at hand. While the narrator device has been misused in the history genre, Yates is able to weave himself seamlessly into the narrative without affecting its outcome or unduly misrepresenting the major players. The result is much more readable than a dry recounting of the facts and brings the sights, sounds, and smells of the racetrack into full relief. This work serves to remind readers of both the good and the bad of racing and why people are compelled to compete at such a high risk when the rewards are often few. Highly recommended for all sports collections. Eric C. Shoaf, Brown Univ. Lib., Providence Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

     



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