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AT THE ALTAR OF SPEED

Name: AT THE ALTAR OF SPEED
Author: Leigh Montville
ISBN: 0-385-50363-6

THE FAST LIFE AND TRAGIC DEATH OF DALE EARNHARDT SR.

by Leigh Montville ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 2, 2001

A private man uncomfortable with words, Earnhardt was no biographer’s dream, but Montville draws a forceful portrait,...

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Sports Illustrated senior writer Montville (Manute, 1993) puts a lot of twangy energy into this biography of stock-car great Dale Earnhardt, who died this year after hitting the wall on the final turn of the final lap at Daytona.

Stock-car racing has come a long way from its moonshiner and revenue-agent roots, and Earnhardt is a kind of poster boy for the transformation: a man who drove as if his hair were on fire, a fearless southern boy who loved to draft along on another’s bumper at 200 mph, who could come out of nowhere to win at the wire, all the while flipping the finger at any driver daring to impede his progress, who nonetheless learned to wear neckties, attend board meetings, and submit to public-relations handlers. Still, “he brought the dirt track with him into the big time,” says Montville in what approaches an idolatrous voice: Earnhardt was dangerous and fun, pretty much the embodiment of stock-car racing, and his fans were legion. Montville traces Earnhardt’s racing life, through all the junkers and crashes and tiny dirt tracks, the long wait for a good car and asphalt, his friendship with Neil Bonnett (drivers don’t often become friends: “Do you want to get close to someone who might not be around in the near future?”), right up to the Learjets and yachts. Then his death at Daytona, a race he had finally won a couple years before after 19 tries. Montville works a little too hard at being thunderstruck by Earnhardt’s death, with stunted sentences to convey his distraction and disbelief—“Seven titles. Six in a nine-year span. Who could argue with this kind of success? He was the best. Maybe the best who ever lived”—that compromise the embrace of his narrative.

A private man uncomfortable with words, Earnhardt was no biographer’s dream, but Montville draws a forceful portrait, letting the evolving atmosphere of NASCAR and Earnhardt’s achievements speak for themselves. (Color photographs, not seen)

Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2001

ISBN: 0-385-50363-6

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2001

Categories:

SPORTS & RECREATION

- BOOK REVIEW
TALL MEN, SHORT SHORTS
by Leigh Montville

- BOOK REVIEW
STING LIKE A BEE
by Leigh Montville

- BOOK REVIEW
EVEL
by Leigh Montville

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WHY WE SWIM

by Bonnie Tsui ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 14, 2020

An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.

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A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.

For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).

An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.

Pub Date: April 14, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Algonquin

Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020

Categories:

GENERAL HISTORY | HEALTH & FITNESS | SPORTS & RECREATION

- BOOK REVIEW
SARAH AND THE BIG WAVE
by Bonnie Tsui ; illustrated by Sophie Diao

- BOOK REVIEW
AMERICAN CHINATOWN
by Bonnie Tsui

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CONCUSSION

by Jeanne Marie Laskas ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 24, 2015

Effectively sobering. Suffice it to say that Pop Warner parents will want to armor their kids from head to toe upon reading...

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A maddening, well-constructed tale of medical discovery and corporate coverup, set in morgues, laboratories, courtrooms, and football fields.

Nigeria-born Bennet Omalu is perhaps an unlikely hero, a medical doctor board-certified in four areas of pathology, “anatomic, clinical, forensic, and neuropathology,” and a well-rounded specialist in death. When his boss, celebrity examiner Cyril Wecht (“in the autopsy business, Wecht was a rock star”), got into trouble for various specimens of publicity-hound overreach, Omalu was there to offer patient, stoical support. The student did not surpass the teacher in flashiness, but Omalu was a rock star all his own in studying the brain to determine a cause of death. Laskas’ (Creative Writing/Univ. of Pittsburgh; Hidden America, 2012, etc.) main topic is the horrific injuries wrought to the brains and bodies of football players on the field. Omalu’s study of the unfortunate brain of Pittsburgh Steeler Mike Webster, who died in 2002 at 50 of a supposed heart attack, brought new attention to the trauma of concussion. Laskas trades in sportwriter-ese, all staccato delivery full of tough guy–isms and sports clichés: “He had played for fifteen seasons, a warrior’s warrior; he played in more games—two hundred twenty—than any other player in Steelers history. Undersized, tough, a big, burly white guy—a Pittsburgh kind of guy—the heart of the best team in history.” A little of that goes a long way, but Laskas, a Pittsburgher who first wrote of Omalu and his studies in a story in GQ, does sturdy work in keeping up with a grim story that the NFL most definitely did not want to see aired—not in Omalu’s professional publications in medical journals, nor, reportedly, on the big screen in the Will Smith vehicle based on this book.

Effectively sobering. Suffice it to say that Pop Warner parents will want to armor their kids from head to toe upon reading it.