Synopses & Reviews
The Right Stuff of the "Brickyard" -- the name given by the racers to the fabled Indianapolis Speedway--Against Death and Time is a chronicle of one fatal season, 1955, in the post-war 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 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. The book is based on Brock's incomparable experience and interviews with dozens of surviving racers, widows, car owners, mechanics, and historians, and Brock's own deep research in the archives of the Speedway, the Detroit Public Library Auto Archive, United States Auto Club, Henry Ford Museum, Smithsonian Institute, and those of contemporaneous newspapers and periodicals.
Synopsis
In Brock Yates the greatest generation of American racecar driving has found its ideal chronicler.
Synopsis
Yates tells the story of the reckless, dispossessed young men who raced during the fatal 1955 season at Indianapolis Speedway--not for fame or money, because there was none--but for "the sheer unvarnished hell of it."