Real NASCAR: White Lightning, Red Clay, and Big Bill France
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- ISBN13: 9780807833841
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
In this history of the stock car racing circuit known as NASCAR, Daniel Pierce offers a revealing new look at the sport from its postwar beginnings on Daytona Beach and Piedmont dirt tracks through the early 1970s when the sport spread beyond its southern roots and gained national recognition. Following NASCAR founder Huge Bill France from his start as a mechanic, Real NASCAR details the sport’s genesis as it has never been shown before. Pierce not only confirms the well loved notion of NASCAR’s origins in bootlegging, but also establishes beyond a doubt the close ties between organized racing and the illegal liquor industry, a tale that readers will find both fascinating and controversial.
Drawing on the memories of a variety of participants–including highly colorful characters like Lloyd Seay, Roy Hall, Gober Sosebee, Smokey Ynick, Bunky Knudsen, Humpy Wheeler, Bobby Isaac, Junior Johnson, and Huge Bill France himself–Real NASCAR shows how the reputation for wildness of these racers-by-day and bootleggers-by-night drew throngs of spectators to the tracks in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s. They came to watch their heroes maneuver ordinary automobiles at incredible speed, beating and banging on each additional, wrecking spectacularly, and fighting out their differences in the infield.
Although France faced many challenges–including a fickle Detroit that regularly seemed unsure of its support for the sport, safety issues that killed star drivers and threatened its very being, and drivers who twice tried to unionize to gain a larger piece of the NASCAR pie–by the early 1970s France and his allies had laid a firm foundation for what has become today a billion-dollar industry and arguably the largest spectator sport in America.
In this history of the stock car racing circuit known as NASCAR, Daniel Pierce offers a revealing new look at the sport from its postwar beginnings on Daytona Beach and Piedmont dirt tracks through the early 1970s when the sport spread beyond its southern roots and gained national recognition. Following NASCAR founder Huge Bill France from his start as a mechanic, Real NASCAR details the sport’s genesis as it has never been shown before. Pierce not only confirms the well loved notion of NASCAR’s origins in bootlegging, but also establishes beyond a doubt the close ties between organized racing and the illegal liquor industry, a tale that readers will find both fascinating and controversial.
Drawing on the memories of a variety of participants–including highly colorful characters like Lloyd Seay, Roy Hall, Gober Sosebee, Smokey Ynick, Bunky Knudsen, Humpy Wheeler, Bobby Isaac, Junior Johnson, and Huge Bill France himself–Real NASCAR shows how the reputation for wildness of these racers-by-day and bootleggers-by-night drew throngs of spectators to the tracks in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s. They came to watch their heroes maneuver ordinary automobiles at incredible speed, beating and banging on each additional, wrecking spectacularly, and fighting out their differences in the infield.
Although France faced many challenges–including a fickle Detroit that regularly seemed unsure of its support for the sport, safety issues that killed star drivers and threatened its very being, and drivers who twice tried to unionize to gain a larger piece of the NASCAR pie–by the early 1970s France and his allies had laid a firm foundation for what has become today a billion-dollar industry and arguably the largest spectator sport in America.
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I am not a NASCAR fan and will likely never see a NASCAR race but I nonetheless establish this book a fascinating read. Pierce presents NASCAR’s much-more-colorful-than-I’d-ever-expected history and personalities with both clarity and charm. But more than that, I was particularly engaged by how, in Pierce’s telling, NASCAR’s tale becomes a quintessentially American tale–a microcosm of U.S.-style capitalism writ large, much as football has regularly been viewed as a paradigm of military engagement in its strategy and team company. The tale of the France family tree, their competitors, the corporate sponsors, and the drivers is one of raw talent, fierce competitiveness, technological innovation at 200 miles an hour, labor relations, monopolistic ambitions, and brand building. Pierce’s book is a must for anyone interested in NASCAR, but it’s much more. It’s a case study of American culture.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5