| In Association With... |  |
|
|
|
| 
 enlarge | Author: Liz Clarke
Publisher: Villard
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
Buy New: $14.08
You Save: $10.92 (44%)
New (29) from $14.08
Avg. Customer Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 44485
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.3
ISBN: 0345499883
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.72
EAN: 9780345499882
ASIN: 0345499883
Publication Date: February 12, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20080725212931T
|
| Customer Reviews:
NASCAR April 10, 2008
It's a great book. The best thing is buying online thru Amazon. Delivered right to your home, plus save a few bucks also.
Fast-paced and fun February 27, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
With equal parts sports history, business strategy and social commentary, Clarke tracks the rise of NASCAR by focusing on the personalities that made (and continue to make) the sport grow.
If you're looking for a book that recaps significant races or focuses on racing strategy, this isn't it. However, if you want to walk away with the feeling that you've spent an afternoon on Richard Petty's front porch chatting over a few Cheerwines, then you'll thoroughly enjoy this book. Clarke has clearly invested much of herself in NASCAR and the sport has repaid the debt with the gift of its personalities which Clarke presents here as very few could do.
While Clarke clearly loves the sport, she does not sugarcoat some of NASCAR's historic flaws such as the reluctance to quickly address safety issues. In the end, this fast-paced account will leave you with some great insight and knowledge that will serve you as well in Hueytown, Alabama as it will on Madison Avenue.
A winning story, well told February 27, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Take a good look at Liz Clarke's new book, One Helluva Ride: How NASCAR Swept the Nation. You don't have to know auto racing to relate to NASCAR's populist, dirt-track roots, its self-made heroes and multibillion-dollar marketing revolution. If you're already a fan, you'll find fresh insights and up-close portraits of the sport's most compelling personalities. If you're on the fence, climb over: Follow the money, meet the stars, get inside the rivalries and tragedies that pull them together and push them apart.
Clarke knows sports on the world stage. She has covered the NFL, the World Cup, Wimbledon and the Olympics from Sydney to Salt Lake to Athens and the Italian Alps. In 15 years of writing for the Charlotte Observer, the Dallas Morning News, USA Today and, now, the Washington Post, she has also become an authority on NASCAR, a truly American sports phenomenon.
If you can't get past comparing strawberries and cream at Wimbledon's Centre Court to chicken bones at Lowe's Motor Speedway in Charlotte, you're missing a great story. Clarke's colleague Michael Wilbon, the Post columnist and co-host of ESPN's Pardon the Interruption, says it well: "You can't pretend to have a full-scale discussion of sports anymore without understanding NASCAR."
Clarke is an especially observant guide. As a reporter, she didn't choose to write about NASCAR; she knew almost nothing about racing when she was sent to cover her first speedway practice in Charlotte in 1991. As she got to know the drivers, she found them more accessible and interesting than many of the arrogant athletes in pro sports. It was clear that the drivers' personalities, not their 3,400-pound cars, were the sport's real drawing cards.
NASCAR has outgrown cliches about stock car racing and its tens of millions of die-hard fans. Madison Avenue's embrace is hastening change. The small Southern tracks that launched the sport are closing, with new speedways popping up in southern California, Las Vegas, Chicago and Kansas City. International drivers, including Colombia's Juan Pablo Montoya and Scotland's Dario Franchitti, are pulling into NASCAR garages.
In One Helluva Ride, Clarke charts NASCAR's rise with energy and expertise. The book profits tremendously from the trust and respect she earned from such racing icons as Richard Petty and the late Dale Earnhardt. The big picture is clear, but details set the book apart. Readers learn the secret of Petty's elaborate autograph, start a day at Earnhardt's farm with a Sundrop soda and a sausage biscuit, watch his fatal crash from the press box at Daytona in 2001.
[...]
NASCAR Nationa, Indeed February 26, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Liz Clark's outstanding perspective of events and characters that helped shaped NASCAR is one of the best I have seen. Her mix of researched history, as well as personal anecdotes, is a must-read for hard-line NASCAR fans, as well as those folks who think NASCAR racing is just a bunch of cars going around in circles. Clark cuts to the core of NASCAR's popularity...which is people....working-class people who share a sense of excitement and comraderie in pulling for their favorite driver and team. She also shares poignant memories of what it was like to interview NASCAR superstars Dale Earnhardt, Sr., Richard Petty, Bobby Allison and many others. NASCAR's history is much more than names, dates and places.
Clark gives you glimpses of the sport you won't find anywhere else.
One Helluva Read February 24, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Let me say at the outset that I knew next to nothing about NASCAR prior to reading this book. I've never watched a race on TV for more than a few minutes; I've never attended a race in person. With that said, I couldn't stop reading "One Helluva Ride." It's a terrific read and a great American story that reads like a novel, as all the best nonfiction should.
Author Liz Clarke has covered NASCAR for many years for newspapers such as the Charlotte Observer, USA Today, and, currently, the Washington Post. She knows her subject - really, really well. And she can turn a phrase so that within a few pages you're completely sucked in and fascinated by people you never even heard of yesterday.
The story of NASCAR is the American dream come to life. As Clarke writes, 'from stock-car racing's beginning, there was something illicit about it - like early rock `n' roll - that suggested a certain depravity . . . it was a sport at the fringe of the rules.' From the sport's beginning with dirt tracks in the deep south where souped up cars raced far away from the prying eyes of local law enforcement and drivers tinkered on their own sedans to compete, to the latter days of multi-million dollar speedways and primetime racing on television, to the sea change as the NASCAR's original sponsor, cigarette maker RJ Reynolds, steps aside to make way for more family-friendly advertising and an even wider audience on the world stage. You can see how quickly this all took place from a look at the list of all-time NASCAR champions and their winnings in the back of the book - Red Byron in 1949 pocketed $5800; Jimmie Johnson in 2007 took home over $15 million.
The drama - the pathos - all here. And the cast of characters are sharply drawn, from Dale Earnhardt, the Intimidator (who, 'with every lap,' writes Clarke, `evened the score for the guy who was invisible to society...who cleans the gutters, jackhammers the pavement, and services the air conditioner without ever making eye contact') - to multi-millionaire Junior Johnson, who in his mid-70's still cooks his own breakfast every weekday morning - to the visionary and imposing Big Bill France (whose family actually owns NASCAR, lock, stock-car and barrel) - to Tim Flock (who ran 9 NASCAR races in the early 50's accompanied by a rhesus monkey who waved to fans from the car's window outfitted in a racing uniform and helmet) - to Richard Petty (The King) who learned how to sign autographs without using his wrist so his arm wouldn't tire out as much) - to Jeff Gordon ('the first NASCAR driver to look like a dream date') - to a host of Miss Winston's cozying up to the champions for a kiss and product placement in Victory Lane - and many, many more.
The moments when Clarke relates her own experiences covering this circus cavalcade make the read even more interesting. `My first mistake was wearing a dress,' she says of the first time she enters the NASCAR garage as a young reporter in Charlotte, North Carolina, knowing nearly nothing about stock-car racing. Riding shotgun with a racecar driver at nearly top speed to see exactly what it was like to perform this sport she wrote about as an observer. Clarke in a remote Italian village covering the 2006 Winter Olympics, making a bet with a colleague that she'd be able to find a place to watch the Daytona 500 live on TV - and winning. Her agonizing moments in the press box between the time of Dale Earnhardt's fatal crash to the official announcement of his death - a moment that changed the sport irrevocably, forever.
Clarke writes, 'NASCAR was unlike other sports in so many obvious ways...but it differed in other respects, too. It wasn't a sport to the drivers and mechanics who worked so hard. It was an all-consuming calling, with the joy and sorrow of life itself.' And that's what makes this well-written book so appealing. Because it's about people who are living life hard and taking it to the limit. And, due to the nature of the sport, death is always as close as the next turn of the wheel, which makes life stand out in vibrant relief.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
