[Ed note: This is one of our holiday gift guides, which is a service we’re doing to help everyone with their end-of-year shopping. This post also contains some affiliate links, which means we might get paid a commission if you buy something listed here or, usually, anything else on one of the sites. We won’t do this often, but it’s a way to support the site if you’re so inclined.]
Racing with Rich Energy: How a Rogue Sponsor Took Formula One for a Ride
A well-reported and often hilarious romp through the twists and turns of the Rich Energy saga in Formula 1, “Racing with Rich Energy” is a tale that’s so ridiculous it’s hard to believe it’s not fiction. The book was written by our pals Alanis King and Elizabeth Blackstock who dive deep into just how a guy with $770 in his pocket convinced the sport he could spend the millions of dollars necessary to prop up a new racing team. Whether you’re a long time F1 fan or just got into the sport because of “Drive to Survive,” the book is an excellent companion piece for even the most casual fan.
A Quiet Greatness
“A Quiet Greatness” is by far the most exquisite (and expensive) book on the list. Numbering over 1,300 pages of rare and glossy photos on heavy 100-lb art stock, this four-volume set about the history of Japanese cars is as much a work of art as some of the cars it covers. We had the authors Myron Vernis and Mark Brinker on our podcast and they go into all it took to make the book and why it’s so important. It’s $350 but it’s worth every penny and they’re only going to print a limited number so it’s a collector’s item. Where to buy: Directly from the authors
Travels With Charley
John Steinbeck is one of the great American authors of the 20th century and there’s plenty of his fiction worth suggesting, but nothing quite captures the feeling of adventure and travel possible in this vast country like “Travels with Charley” does. Steinbeck and his dog Charley set out in his converted GMC camper (appropriately named Rocinante — see above pic of me with Roci at the Steinbeck Museum.) to find America. His quote about Texas is still my favorite: “For all its enormous range of space, climate, and physical appearance, and for all the internal squabbles, contentions, and strivings, Texas has a tight cohesiveness perhaps stronger than any other section of America. Rich, poor, Panhandle, Gulf, city, country, Texas is the obsession, the proper study, and the passionate possession of all Texans.” Damn, that’s just good writing.
Across The Airless Wilds: The Lunar Rover and the Triumph of the Final Moon Landings
Cars… in space. Author Earl Swift is one of the keenest chroniclers of automotive history working right now and he brings a historian’s eye to his books (I can also recommend The Big Roads as probably the best modern take on the creation of the American interstate system you can read). I thought I had a good understanding of the history of NASA’s lunar rover until I read “Across the Airless Wilds” and realized how much I didn’t know about the crash program by Boeing and GM to build it. Almost as fascinating is the history of the Chrysler and Bendix proposals that didn’t make it.
Survival Of The Fastest: Weed, Speed, and the 1980s Drug Scandal That Shocked the Sports World
The story of Randy Lanier was first told by Patrick George at the old lighting site and it still captivates today. A gifted driver with an entrepreneurial spirit and a habit for trouble, Lanier was able to fund his racing dreams by smuggling weed into Florida. Drugs, race cars, speedboats. It’s basically a Michael Mann movie. The driver (with help from AJ Baime) recalls in “Survival of the Fastest” how he almost turned his drug business into a racing career and managed to become the Indy 500 Rookie of the Year before ending up facing a life sentence in a federal penitentiary. Lanier is not a trained writer but he is a natural storyteller and one who doesn’t spare his ego in admitting how he screwed up his life.
Robot Take The Wheel: The Road to Autonomous Cars and the Last Art of Driving
Please excuse the nestling doll of plugs here, but I’d be remiss to not mention our Jason Torchinsky’s “Robot Take the Wheel” about what potential and pitfalls exist with self-driving cars. More than just a discussion about the technical realities of autonomous driving, Jason invites the reader to reconsider what these new machines mean for humanity and car culture. As a bonus, Beau wrote the forward!
Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans
If you’ve seen “Ford vs. Ferrari” you have seen a fairly good retelling of the spirit of Ford’s battle with Enzo Ferrari. I am pro-movie. However, the movie isn’t as good or as accurate as the book on which it is based (though Tracy Letts is perfect as Henry Ford II). Journalist and writer A.J. Baime is our most prolific automotive storyteller and it doesn’t get much better than “Go Like Hell.” In particular, the book does a great job of explaining why Ken Miles is a hero and doesn’t do Leo Beebe dirty (as the film does).
Boundless: The Rise, Fall, and Escape of Carlos Ghosn
Here are how most automotive CEO books go: Adversity, spark of genius, profits, car, adversity, spark of genius, car, boring family aside, profits. “Boundless: The Rise, Fall, and Escape of Carlos Ghosh” tells the story of the infamous Nissan-Renault executive and features about 100% more Japanese prisons, green berets, manga, and daring escapes (take that Lee Iacocca’s autobiography!). This book was written by the Wall Street Journal’s Nick Kostov and Sean McLain and it’ll soon show up on Apple TV. Read it before it does!
Road To Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong About The Future Of Transportation
This book was suggested by our pal Zack Klapman, who just finished it and says it gives a great look at how Bird’s scooters quickly became too broken to use and how the whole micromobility push over the last few years was built on questionable assumptions. I’m looking forward to reading this one, as well.
Harry Truman’s Excellent Adventure: The True Story of a Great American Road Trip
I love nonfiction books and I love nonfiction books about Harry Truman (I could literally do a gift guide that is just books about Harry Truman). The best book about Harry Truman is definitely David McCullough’s Pulitzer-winning “Truman.” The funniest book about Harry Truman, though? That honor goes to Matthew Algeo’s “Harry Truman’s Excellent Adventure.” Algeo captures what happened when Harry and Bess Truman decided to buy a Chrysler and drive across the country to see some of their friends. It’s completely unfathomable today and was mostly unfathomable at the time (especially to the Secret Service, which was quite surprised by the trip and had to scramble to keep the Trumans safe). It is the unlikeliest of stories and represents a brief moment in time where this was possible.
Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors
There’s no shortage of books/tv segments/podcasts/stories about the genius of Elon Musk. As may have become clear to you recently, Musk is not perfect. Edward Niedermeyer’s book “Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors” has gotten a lot more attention lately as Musk contends with his purchase of Twitter. If you want to hear about how Tesla came about in a book that actually mentions Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning it’s worth picking up. I’d recommend that title, as well as The Reckoning by David Halberstam. Published in 1986, it’s a little behind the times now, but it’s a terrific history of Ford and Nissan especially during the sixties and seventies. I have a lot of good memories from working at Dan Gurney’s All American Racer. One of the best is for the 2 weeks I was kind of Smokey’s gopher when he came out to Santa Ana to fit his engine in the Indy Eagle he bought. It’s like sitting down with Smokey and encouraging him to carry on. Rambling, yes, repetitive for sure, but always fascinating and, despite what may be some exaggerations and/or evasions, an honest look at the man. It’s 600 pages. A good editor could have cut it to half-size, but if Smokey had gone into more detail in some of the more fascinating areas, it could easily have been 1000 pages in edited form. It surveys a lot of the negative stuff we often discuss here (autonomous cars, distracted driving, etc.) but also highlights the simple yet profound pleasure of interacting with our vehicles. He’s got a very engaging writing style and more than anything, he gives you things to think further about yourself. It would be interesting to embed a journalist inside of a car company to capture what it takes to create a new model. Sort of like Tracy Kidder’s “The Soul of a New Machine.” Are there any books like that focused on an automobile? “Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk-heaps, sardine canneries of corru- gated iron, honky-tonks, restaurants and whore-houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flop-houses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, “whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,” by which he meant Every- body. Had the man looked through another peep-hole he might have said : “Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,” and he would have meant the same thing.” Named my first Type 2 Westfalia Rocinante because of Steinbeck: who doesn’t like tilting at windmills? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGc-2J5BB2U You can see it in the map of their campus. https://wizardacademy.org/land-of-la-mancha/ I hear that they also dabble in whiskey if you’re interested. Interesting list, many not what I would think of as car books, but just books where cars play a prominent role. Not that there is anything wrong with that. The Limit: Life and Death on the 1961 Grand Prix Circuit- Michael Cannell The real “drive to survive” story Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do and What It Says About Us–by Tom Vanderbilt A fascinating dissection of what driving is and how we do it. I hope to meet all of the crew at some point in the future. I promise to drive something weird. I’ve read a couple of the books listed in the article, and didn’t keep either. Tastes vary, I guess. But any list that doesn’t include Tom McCahill’s “The Modern Sports Car” — like just about all my books, long out-of-print — is woefully incomplete. Never picked one up though, may have to check it out. Who can forget his description of the nascent used car salesman? “Of course, the investment was a good one and Segouin had managed to give the impression that it was by a favour of friendship the mite of Irish money was to be included in the capital of the concern. Jimmy had a respect for his father’s shrewdness in business matters and in this case it had been his father who had first suggested the investment; money to be made in the motor business, pots of money. Moreover Segouin had the unmistakable air of wealth. Jimmy set out to translate into days’ work that lordly car in which he sat. How smoothly it ran. In what style they had come careering along the country roads! The journey laid a magical finger on the genuine pulse of life and gallantly the machinery of human nerves strove to answer the bounding courses of the swift blue animal.” R/- Dont mind me.Carry on He then moves to the island and spends a year getting ready, learning the course by riding a bicycle on it for months, lining up his ride, etc. all with a goal of simply not coming in last. It’s really enjoyable, and makes something pretty damn hard seem actually obtainable.
