An absorbing exploration of one of America’s most popular, and dangerous, sports that will be most appealing to NASCAR fans.
NASCAR legend Waltrip (DW: A Lifetime Going Around in Circles, 2004) takes us onto the track, into the pits and behind the scenes of his racing career.
The author—a three-time winner of the NASCAR Series Cup and winner of the 1989 Daytona 500, a race he describes as NASCAR’s “Super Bowl”—was in the broadcast booth for the 2001 edition, cheering on his younger brother Michael, the eventual victor. That victory was overshadowed, however, by the death of driver Dale Earnhardt in a final-lap crash, and Waltrip’s chilling description of the race and its aftermath are the entry point into an exploration of the author’s life behind the wheel. The majority of the book covers ground familiar to readers of his previously published autobiography, including youthful car chases with the police, triumphs and failures on the track and his discovery of religious faith. Waltrip pays particular attention to his relationships with other drivers including Earnhardt, Bobby Allison and Cale Yarborough, and how their battles on the track often spilled into their personal lives. The author also provides some fascinating background history on racing at Daytona, again emphasizing the dangers faced by the drivers, and the many injuries and fatalities that have taken place there and elsewhere on the racing circuit. In the end, Waltrip argues that only the death of the sport’s greatest star, Earnhardt, led to changes in NASCAR’s attitude to safety, and even then it took strong pressure from him and others to force the adoption of stronger measures by a culture that prizes the recklessness of its heroes.
An absorbing exploration of one of America’s most popular, and dangerous, sports that will be most appealing to NASCAR fans.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-4489-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2012
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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