Suggested motor sports reading

Are you kidding? The former was one of the worst books I've ever had the displeasure to pick up. All he proved was that he had plenty of cassettes and fresh batteries. That "written work" followed on the heels of a book poorly researched and ridden with inaccuracies.

DO read David Poole,Monte Dutton and Jenna Fryer (proof that not all AP stories are dry, generic and without some meat on the bone). DO NOT touch anything "written" by Golenbock.

 

Who knew that motorsports literature would be the jagged blade that so tore us apart?

For what it's worth, I've read one motorsports book, and it's MacGregor's. Terrific writer, terrific guy -- one of the best in the business on all fronts.

 

another worth taking a look at is Wide Open: Days and Nights on the NASCAR tour by Shaun Assael. Basically, he followed around three seperate drivers/ teams for the 1996 season and it has some pretty good insight in it.

 

Ditto on Neal Thompson's "Driving with the Devil." It's a good primer on NASCAR's early moonshining history and some of the original stars who aren't talked about much anymore. MacGregor's book is hit and miss - there's a lot of gee-whiz-those-cars-sure-do-drive-fast bits to it, and calling his wife "The Beep" really rubbed me the wrong way. But it's more ambitious than just about every other racin' book out there, and some of the driver and fan vignettes are damned funny.

And yeah, I know it's not a book, but Junior's "Back in the Day" shows on Speed Channel are worth a glance just to see how much racin' has changed over the past three or four decades. The turn-left-driver-fast approach hasn't changed, but just about everything else about NASCAR looks a lot different.