Amazon.com
In The Wildest Ride: A History of NASCAR, Joe Menzer traces the vivid history of stock car racing from when bootleggers drove hopped-up cars to outrun the law for fun and profit to the present racing frenzy that has thrust NASCAR to the front of the pack as one of America's fastest-growing sports industries.
The result of Menzer's research is not dry prose filled with racing statistics but rather a loose chronology of anecdotes that reads like an oral history. Legendary finishes, rivalries, and rags-to-riches success stories are championed here, including the exploits of Joe Weatherly and Curtis Turner (both on and off the track) and the personalities of David Pearson, Bill Elliott, and the Petty family. Menzer does not back off from the low points either, from Wendell Scott's experience as the first African American driver to the unhealthy mix of stock cars and alcohol (often at the same time).
Despite the conversational tone, Menzer never loses sight of the politics, sponsorship, and fan-base issues that have arisen, especially as faster cars and tracks began to be built in the 1950s and '60s. As driver Jimmy Thompson assessed the new Daytona International Speedway in 1959: "There have been other tracks that separated the men from the boys. This is the track that will separate the brave from the weak after the boys are gone." --Michael Ferch
From Publishers Weekly
This insightful, energetic history of NASCAR, the National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing, will delight casual and hardcore fans, who have made yearly NASCAR events a $200-million-plus industry. Menzer (Carolina Panthers), a sports writer for the Winston-Salem Journal, details early stock-car racing from its birth in 1930s North Carolina, "where moonshine runners... took great pleasure in trying to outrun federal agents from the Internal Revenue Service." The second half divulges insider information since 1960, via anecdotes and interviews with such current NASCAR legends as the late Dale Earnhardt and past champions like Junior Johnson, whose career "from moonshine runner to champion driver to successful car owner" personifies NASCAR's evolution. But this is no puff piece. Through colorful interviews, the drivers reveal that "there was cheating going on from day one"; in the 1950s and '60s "there was a lot of drug use in racing"; and many drivers are still haphazard about safety standards. Most interesting, Menzer illuminates the story of Wendell Scott, the first African-American driver in the early 1960s, when "NASCAR was a white man's sport... and there was little or no sympathy for Scott when his NASCAR efforts met with resistance." This is an excellent, broad-ranging account of the fastest-growing sport in America. Agent, Shari Wenk. (July)Forecast: With NASCAR's huge popularity and Fox-TV's billion-dollar contract starting in 2002 (on top of NBC's coverage), this should be a smash hit.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
There have been a number of NASCAR (North American Stock Car) histories and tell-alls over the years, but, refreshingly, Menzer sticks to history, mining the facts of the series and its rise to prominence. Unlike so many other books about stock-car racing (e.g., Mike Hembree's NASCAR: The Definitive History of America's Sport, HarperEntertainment, 2000), this is not merely a picture book (in fact, there are no photos at all). Nor is it a driver's life story or a report from a racing team's season, like Paul Hemphill's Wheels (LJ 4/1/97) or Scott Huler's A Little Bit Sideways (Motorbooks, 1999). Instead, it focuses on the rich legacy of the founding France family, the evolution of the cars from modified stock cars to purpose-built racers, and the fan-base expansion of the 1980s and 1990s that made NASCAR one of the most popular spectator sports in the world. With a nod to both past and present, Menzer describes how the sport has developed into a well-oiled advertising venture for sponsors and how driver personalities have propelled its popularity. Highly entertaining and full of facts rather than fluff. Eric C. Shoaf, Brown Univ. Lib., Providence Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
The National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing has just celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, and stock car racing has become the second largest spectator sport in the country, with both NBC and Fox now televising races live. Although there are countless books celebrating NASCAR and its drivers, Robert Hagstrom's The NASCAR Way: The Business That Drives the Sport (1998) is the only book that investigates the organization that controls stock car racing from a nonfan's point of view. Now Menzer, who clearly is a fan, offers this colorful history of NASCAR. Menzer is a sportswriter for the Winston-Salem Journal and the author of Four Corners (1999), a paean to North Carolina basketball. Although he exalts racing and lionizes the drivers, he also frankly discusses the rivalries among driving teams, the ever-present potential for tragedy, the cover-up of the fact that one of the circuit's popular drivers had AIDS, the dearth of African American drivers and fans, and the not unrelated ubiquity of the Confederate flag at racing events. David Rouse
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
Publishers Weekly Insightful, energetic...an excellent, broad-ranging account.
Book Description
In The Wildest Ride, Joe Menzer gives us a timely, comprehensive look at the dramatic, rollicking history of stock-car racing in America, exploring both its inauspicious bootlegging beginnings and the billion-dollar industry that it has become. Menzer straps the reader into the driver's seat for a run through NASCAR's history, revealing the sport's remarkable rise from rogue outfit to corporate darling. Menzer also profiles the many superstar drivers who have dominated the sport, men as unpredictable as they are fearless, including "The Intimidator," Dale Earnhardt, whose ferocious driving made him NASCAR's signature personality -- and whose tragic death at the 2001 Daytona 500 was mourned by millions. Menzer expertly maneuvers through the tight corners and wide-open straightaways of NASCAR's history, examining the circuit's attempt to distance itself from its "redneck racin'" past without compromising its country roots. Simultaneously rowdy and insightful, The Wildest Ride is a thorough and unfailingly honest account of NASCAR's amazing rise to prominence and a sweeping account of a uniquely American phenomenon.
About the Author
Joe Menzer is a sportswriter for The Winston-Salem Journal. His articles have appeared in The Sporting News, Inside Sports, Hoop Magazine, and Basketball Weekly. He is the author of Four Corners: How UNC, N.C. State, Duke, and Wake Forest Made North Carolina the Center of the Basketball Universe. He lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, with his wife and children.
Home
