****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
I've read "From Moonshine to Madison Avenue," "The Wildest Ride," and "The Nascar Way." Those three books are each excellent histories of Nascar and each has its own focus, but apart from the last one listed, their authors don't write exceptionally well. This book by Hinton is in a whole different league, however. The man knows how to write REALLY well - and how to tell and report a story. The stories in this book are much more than good ol' boy anecdotes, although anecdotes are sprinkled into his reporting when they elucidate the point. Personal interviews of a very large number of people who have been prominent in Nascar form a good deal of this book's spine. While its focus is Daytona, it is about quite a bit more than just what has happened at that track.The book is fairly critical of Nascar - and refreshingly so. ... Well, he maligns a lot of things - as a good reporter should when the subject deserves it. But he also reports the poingant, the tragic, and the triumphant, too, and the book as a whole is remarkably well balanced. If you're looking for a simple public relations fluff piece that blows sunshine [at you] about your favorite driver or Nascar in general, don't buy this book. You will be disappointed and maybe even angry because this book was not written for you. On the other hand, if you are a casual fan, or a dyed-in-the-wool one with an open mind, this book will give you a lot of wonderfully detailed history about Daytona, Nascar, the cars and races, and most important - the people and personalities big and small that have been a part of the show. You will definitely get a good deal of insight about how the facinating circus that is Nascar today has come to be. Buy this book and enjoy!This book is really an easy read. I read it in one afternoon. I found the story on Darrell Waltrip's concussion injury and the comments from Junior Johnson very surprising. There is another chapter on a driver who never made a name, but suffered a head injury which resulted in his elderly parents caring for him. The final chapter on Dale Earnhardt definitely could have been written by any fan who watched the race on that tragic day.Great read for both avid Nascar fans and amateur race fans looking for a wild adventure.This book provides a lot of interesting insight into the history of Daytona and NASCAR,plus stories and backgrounds of its bigger name drivers.pleased with purchaseGoodMy guess is that even the locals here would tell you that the relationship between the Daytona area and automobile engineering began with the primitive stock jalopies dueling on the beach in the late 1930's. They need to go back further. A full century ago the Daytona-Ormond region was noted for style. Not exactly Charleston, SC, perhaps, but a place where the rich and famous wintered thanks to excellent rail service. Among these winter guests were industrialists who could not sit still for four months waiting for the fish to bite. With the invention and development of the combustible engine, the Atlantic beach became for a time America's test track.Author Ed Hinton is best known as a longtime beat reporter for modern day stock car racing, but his research into the early days of Daytona motorsports is surprisingly good. As early as 1903 an annual winter racing festival was established, fueled by both the daring of a new breed of test drivers and the research and development interests of major auto manufacturers. This was long before the empowerment of any official sanctioning body; templates and restrictor plates were unheard of. The conditions and the technology favored racing the clock, and by the time Wilbur and Orville had reached flight further up the coast, test drivers were pushing the 100mph envelope at the Daytona-Ormond city line.Curiously, the greatest day of Daytona beach racing was in a sense its death knell. There would be a limit as to how much traction could be generated by sand and rubber, and in 1933 Sir Malcolm Campbell--in a hair-raising exhibition-discovered that dangerous point. He stretched his Bluebird to the unthinkable speed of 330 mph along the beach track, then turned around to complete the required stretch for an official world record. At 300mph he lost control of his car but--in what must have been one of the greatest maneuvering feats ever--recovered the car and finished the run. He was also finished with the unpredictability of Atlantic beach conditions, and he joined the exodus to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.One of the heart-pounding spectators of this feat was one William France. A good mechanic and a part-time Saturday night racer in the Washington, DC suburbs, France was also something of a social philosopher on the subject of racing. He discovered among other things that many promoters were dishonest, that good engines were not generally available to the driver of average means like himself, and that in the unregulated world of local racing, there was no protection for individual competitors. And though he probably never tasted moonshine whiskey, he was not so puritanical as to ignore the skill and technology of "moonshine transporters."With the emigrations to Utah and Indiana of big name drivers, the Depression-ravaged Daytona area was open to about any money making idea, though France's first beachfront stock car races in the late 1930's were not exactly bonanzas. As a promoter France discovered that drivers cheated as often as management, and his conviction deepened for the need of a powerful sanctioning body. After the war hiatus, France was enough of a force to create NASCAR in 1947 with himself, not surprisingly, as its not so benevolent dictator. He had a knack for getting ahead of parades that had started without him-Harold Brasington's daring 1.3 mile super-speedway at Darlington, SC in 1949, and the concept of the 500 mile race at a time when no one knew if a stock car could actually do that. When by 1955 he saw that both concepts were eminently successful, and developers were clamoring for Daytona beachfront sites, France set in motion the construction of today's 2.5-mile super-speedway, where the inaugural race was held in February 1959.By this point in his history Hinton is now in the world of races he himself attended with drivers he knew intimately well. Daytona is only one of at least twenty sanctioned tracks in stock car's senior circuit, and the second half of this work is the story of the "annual visits," through which we see the development, the glory years, and the declines of the great ones of the modern era. In his introduction the author notes that his book was almost finished at the time of Earnhardt's death during the final lap of the 2001 Daytona 500. While he describes that race with particular emphasis upon the Earnhardt tragedy, it does not appear that he extensively reworked his text in light of the accident. Translate: the Intimidator wasn't "cleaned up" for posterity.But because of his closeness to this generation of drivers, Hinton cannot quite contain himself to the Daytona scene. There are great stories to be told, rivalries probed, genuinely funny incidents that occurred many miles from Daytona that spice the second half of the work. I have to admit that many of these tales we've heard before-though here we get them in the uncensored quotes of sources like Darrell Waltrip. Because he writes well, and because he does justice to the recent Daytona races, Hinton can be forgiven his repetitions and diversions. Moreover, his coverage of issues involving driver safety in recent years is evidence that, in the tradition of old Bill France, he has given a lot of thought to this sportEd Hinton 's "Daytona: From The Birth of Speed to the Death of The Man in Black" is in my humble opinion, the single best "NASCAR book" out there.The book includes long narrative pieces on Bobby Allison, Richard Petty, David Pearson (who Hinton credits as the greatest of all time-I humbly agree) Bill Elliott, and Dale Earnhardt.There are also amazing chapters on Junior, Mario, Lee Roy Yarbrough, of course Cale Yarborough. It's an amazing piece of work.His chapter describing Petty's decline is beautifully written. He recalls sitting in a rental car with the King at Bristol in '89 after Petty failed to qualify.I can only describe it as heartbreaking.Hinton's chapter on Earnhardt's last years is equally compelling. He paints a portrait of Dale I've never seen anywhere else. According to Hinton, he and Dale were pretty good buds through most of Earnhardt's career, but then in the mid '90s, Hinton published an SI article on Dale's broken past (junior high drop out, two failed marriages, etc.) that Dale's PR people did not appreciate. They restricted Ed's access to Earnhardt from then on.According to Hinton, in the end, Dale's circle was incredibly small and he had grown extremely reclusive.All of that to say, this is the single greatest NASCAR book I've read.
