Blood and Smoke: A True Tale of Mystery, Mayhem, and the Birth of the Indy 500 - Rilegato

Leerhsen, Charles

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 1439149046 ISBN 13: 9781439149041

Casa editrice: Simon & Schuster, 2011

Riassunto

One hundred years ago, 40cars lined up for the firstIndianapolis 500. We are still waiting to find out who won.

The Indy 500 was created to showcase the controversial new sport of automobile racing, which was sweeping the country. Daring young men were driving automobiles at the astonishing speed of 75 miles per hour, testing themselves and their vehicles. It was indeed a young man’s game: with no seat belts, hard helmets or roll bars, the dangers were enormous. When the Indianapolis Motor Speedway opened in 1909, seven people were killed, some of them spectators. Oil-slicked surfaces, clouds of smoke, exploding tires, and flying grit all made driving extremely hazardous, especially with the open-cockpit, windshield-less vehicles. Most drivers rode with a mechanic, who pumped oil manually while watching for cars attempting to pass. Drivers sometimes threw wrenches or bolts at each other during the race in order to gain an advantage. The night before an event, the racers would take up a collection for the next day’s new widows. Bookmakers offered bets not only on who might win but who might survive. Not all the participants in that first Indy 500 lived to see the checkered flag.

Although the 1911 Indy 500 judges declared Ray Harroun, driving a Marmon Wasp, the official winner, there is reason to doubt that result. The timekeeping equipment failed, and the judges had to run for their lives when a driver lost control and his car spun wildly toward their stand. It took officials two days to determine the results, and Speedway authorities ordered the records to be destroyed.

But Blood and Smoke is about more than a race, even a race as fabled as the Indianapolis 500. It is the story of America at the dawn of the automobile age, 29.99 a country in love with speed, danger, and spectacle. It is a story, too, about the young men who would risk their lives for money and glory, the sportsmen whose antics would thrill and outrage Americans in those long-ago days when the automobile was still brand new.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

"Should be required reading for anybody with so much as a vague interest in the birth of the Speedway and the 500."

—Bob Kravitz, The Indianapolis Star

On the centennial of the Indy 500, controversy still reigns over who won the inaugural race, as this lively account of a tumultuous event makes plain.

History comes alive through the research and prose of Leerhsen (Crazy Good: The Story of Dan Patch, the Most Famous Horse in America, 2008), formerly the executive editor of Sports Illustrated. The early days of auto racing ignited plenty of controversy—whether it was even a sport, whether it should be allowed (it seemed far more dangerous than bullfighting, outlawed in the States) and whether, as the New York Times wrote in an editorial headlined “Slaughter as a Spectacle,” the races “bring out the very worst of human nature by providing a most barbarous form of excitement...They are an amusement congenial only to savages and should be stopped.” If such controversy didn’t already give this book enough of a charge, the characters do, led by the entrepreneurial racetrack co-founder “Crazy” Carl Fisher, whose own wife characterized her impulsive, adulterous, reckless spouse as a “lusty and incomprehensible personality.” Then there are drivers such as Barney Oldfield, “the Daredevil Dean of the Roaring Road” who “didn’t have an altruistic bone in his body, but he had a very low threshold of boredom, and plain-vanilla racing excited him as much as it did the average citizen.” For years, plain vanilla appeared to be the only alternative to banishment, as the fledgling sport succumbed to offering a series of short races, much like horse racing, rather than the longer ones that would be more likely to push drivers to destruction and even death. “Which was, of course, why a lot of people came to the auto races,” writes Leerhsen. “Not to see death, exactly, in most cases—but to spend some time luxuriating in its titillating possibility.” And a surprising number of those most titillated were women, as the macho sport proved quite the chick magnet, and anything that suggested strategy was dismissed as “weakness, even femininity.”

By the time the big race rolls around, Leerhsen has already spun a fascinating tale.

—Kirkus Reviews

"With alternating tales of horrifying crashes and the schemes of Carl Fisher, who promoted the Indianapolis Speedway as a venue for airplane races, this is a ripping good yarn of America in the early 20th century. Leerhsen, a witty storyteller, draws from contemporary articles, histories, and interviews to pull readers into a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the building of the Speedway and the first race.... this book has broad appeal, with laugh-out-loud stories and characters who would be unbelievable if they turned up in fiction. Highly recommended."

—Library Journal, starred review

"Leerhsen provides an entertaining history of the automobile’s growth in the early twentieth century. . . . Along the way, readers are treated to sharply humorous social commentary bolstered by fascinating details of Indianapolis life and industry."

—Booklist

"When you read this gripping account of the first Indy 500 run May 30, 1911, you'll wonder why they ever had a second."

—Doug Clark, Greensboro News-Record (NC)

"Entertaining . . . and snarkily humorous."

—Rusty Blackwell, Automobile

L'autore:

Charles Leerhsen has written for Sports Illustrated, Esquire, Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine, Money, People, TV Guide, and Smithsonian. He has been an editor at SI, People, and Us Weekly, and spent eleven years at Newsweek, where as a senior writer he covered sports (including several Olympic Games), entertainment, family stories, and breaking news. He has cowritten three bestselling biographies: Trump: Surviving at the Top, with Donald Trump; Press On! Adventures in the Good Life, with pioneer aviator Chuck Yeager; and The Last Great Ride, with entertainment mogul Brandon Tartikoff. He is the author of Crazy Good: The True Story of Dan Patch, The Most Famous Horse in America. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, the writer Sarah Saffian. Visit the author at www.charlesleerhsen.com.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Simon & Schuster
• Data di pubblicazione: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1439149046
• ISBN 13: 9781439149041
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero edizione: 1
• Numero di pagine: 273