Racing Books

Wonderful book from a series that provides hours of fun reading, especially for kids who are Nascar fans.

This is number 2 in the NASCAR series and it is just as good as number 1 (Race Ready). In The Groove is in the groove. If you like cars you will love this book. The characters are very interesting. It was a fast read. I cannot wait for number 3!

This book has a lot of action. My mom and I really enjoyed reading it together. I would like to read all of the Nascar series that he wrote.

We borrowed this book so often from the library, that I needed to purchase it for our own! My 2.5 year old son loves this book, and will finish each rhyming phrase for me. Plus, my son has learned more about his favorite obsession: Race cars!

Got this for my grandson. It is great since we are all into racing. Know it will be a book his dad and uncle will read to him.

Great ABC book with a NASCAR twist. My grandkids love it and so do I.

The photo on page p. 209 of Jacques Anquetil climbing the Aubisque is one of the most amazing photographs I've ever seen. It's all in there. I'm going to buy another copy just to cut that photo out and frame it.

2003 saw the 100th birthday of the Tour de France, the world's most famous bike race. This book was released at the beginning of the centenary year as part of the race's birthday celebrations.

The race was created by a newspaper called L'Auto, the forerunner of today's sports newspaper L'Equipe. The race's organisers worked closely with L'Equipe in the production of this book. Thanks to L'Equipe's involvement, the book had the pick of a huge amount of material dating back to the Tour's inception. The collection of photographs used is incredible and is the main strength of the book. The Tour is a tough enough race today, but being able to see what sort of conditions and equipment the cyclists had to endure in the early days.....well, phrases like 'seeing is believing' and 'every picture tells a thousand stories' could've been formed with these pages in mind. It was also nice being able to finally put a face to some of the famous names - the likes of Coppi, Bobet and Anquetil.

Essentially, the book begins in 1903, and has something similar to a chapter for each edition of the race. The level of detail varies from year to year - the years where there was a 'big' story are generally given the luxury of an extra couple of pages. These would include, for example, 1998's Festina Affair, Merckx's and Hinault's first wins (1969 and 1978 respectively), the deaths of Tom Simpson (1967) and Fabio Casartelli (1995) and the completion of the race's first hat-trick by Philippe Thys in 1920. Inevitably, some races are comparatively skimmed over. It would've been nice if, for example, the 1960 race had been given some extended coverage also, when Roger Reviere crashed in the mountains and broke his back.

For the most part, the writing centres on the battle for the yellow jersey. L'Auto was responsible for the creation of the famous yellow jersey. In 1919, it arranged for a special jersey to be presented to the race leader so spectators could easily identify him. As the newspaper was printed on yellow paper, they chose yellow as the colour for the jersey. Of course, this would've done no harm to the newspaper sales either.

Little is said, however, about the battles for the race's other jerseys. The King of the Mountains (polka dot) jersey was introduced in 1933, while the Sprinter's (green) jersey was introduced 20 years later, in 1953. They are given some coverage in the stats section at the back of the book, but really only mentioned in passing throughout the book. The combined and red jerseys that were formerly a part of the Tour don't even get a mention in the stats section - though the combined jersey, at least, does make an appearance in one or two photographs. These are only minor quibbles, it has to be said. These omissions are understandable, given all that has happened in this race over the years, and that there was always going to be a limited amount of space available ! This is an incredible book, one that should be owned by anyone who is even vaguely interested in sport.

A sumptuous volume. I found I had to ration my reading to three years at a sitting to avoid finishing it too quickly. A perfect balance of history, anecdote, statistics and photographs.

One thing to bear in mind is that this book is written by the tour organisation. The organisation is rarely at fault for the mishaps and scandals down the years.

One technical quibble is that I don't seem to be able to avoid making smudges on the page edges, no matter now carefully I handle the pages.

No-one is going to be disappointed by this book. I may buy several more copies to give as gifts.

I thought this book was an exciting book because in every part of the book there was something happening. I also liked it because it had a lot in it about biking and how to get started in biking with out showing it directly. It also showed that if your a kind of lazy person who just sits and watches television all the time that you can get out and do something to make yourself proud like doug did on the book.

Olympic Dream by Matt Christopher is an extremely amusing, in my opinion. This book takes place in a small town in the U.S., late 1980's. It is about an adolescent boy. Doug, who meets a man, Red, that completely changes his life. They become friends and Red teaches Doug to ride a bike. The reasons I am recommending this book are, that the author was very descriptive on every part including the characters and setting. He went into superb detail about each characters personality. He described the setting which was the town so that you could visualize it as you were reading it. For instance he described the arcade and old wooden shack with 6 arcade machines each costing a quarter to play. He also made this book have a wonderful moral. This book teachers a lesson that stuck in my head and sticks in others heads too. The moral was never give up and never stop trying. Even though he described the book well he didn't describe it enough to make it boring. Some people say that the problem with this book is that there wasn't a main character. That can be exceptional or miserable but in my opinion that is extraordinary. I think having more than one main character is remarkable because the story isn't focused on one person but on three or four people. This makes the story more absorbing. The three main characters lives all connect. One is the best man in Doug's sisters wedding. Doug is taught to ride a bike by Red (the best man) and they all support each other and it shows different points of view.

This book was fantastic! It really explains how to become a true Olympian. I really encourage people to read this great book!

Mike O'Leary's OUTLAW SPRINTS puts the reader so close to the track you start sneezing. The small cars with big wings that are built from start to finish in a week, tear up the track when they come close to flying. If you have a dirt track near and its a Saturday, then you know they sometimes do fly.
These cars and their drivers are what make motor sport racing an intimate personal event for the owners, the drivers, the fans, the pit crews and the neighbors who live near the track.
A must for every shelf of a true race fan.
Nash Black, author of QUALIFYING LAPS and TRAVELERS.

Mike O'Leary's book is outstanding. A person who has no background in American racing can easily understand the sport after reading this. Great photos and solid information. This book is a pleasure.

Husband loves his Christmas present. There was some delay to get it by Dec 25th, but not a problem. Receiving after the 25th just stretched the holiday out further. I had ordered other books too so it wasn't like he had no books.
The item was as it is described. Reasonable wait time to get it. Great customer service from Amazon.
No problems.

A very moving book. Brings back the sixties, I must say! An evocation of an era lost forever. One can only say that things really where better in the good old days.
It's wonderful to see them come all come (back) alive: Piers himself, but also Jochen Rindt, Frank Williams (the way he was, before he became an ***hole...)and so many household names of the time when I was young.
Wonderful book. Very well written. Excellent photography.

a beautiful book, well worth the wait...arrived safe and sound and not damaged. my partner loved it..very informative, lovely photo,s

For those of you who followed Grand Prix and sports car racing in the 1960s this is a great tale. Drivers, team owners, hangers-on were all basically children at this time. Now the Knighted Brits who are the masters of the GP universe ($$$$) probably would not tell you that they bought a case of cokes to sell by the bottle in the pits to make a bit of money (very true). Alexander Hesketh was a teenager who loaned his helicopter to a team to beat the traffic at Sliverstone(this was very '90s in the '60s!).

This is a marvelous biography of Mr. Courage and many of his friends and the times themselves, and not a burdensome pile of race reports. I did not want it to finish. I will reread it a number of times!

On a recommendation I purchased PLAYERS - the first offering from Steven M. Siemens. I was promised an enjoyable Grisham-type read, what I received was much more. PLAYERS offers an entertaining view into the Califorian lifestyle - politics, lawyers, gangsters, corruption, love, lust, and even polo!

The story circles around the shady effort to open a Las Vegas style casino in Los Angeles. We can all guess what this leads to - murder, blackmail and excitement!. It is so well developed and researched that you find yourself wondering if this could really happen. Yet, this is not the real pull of the novel. Its true strength comes from how the subplots and character development takes on a life of their own, while still remaining truthful to the whole.

I am looking forward to his next book.

I found players to be very fast paced, and easy to read. It held my interest, even though i don't know much about polo. I purchased the book for my adult chrildren, and they enjoyed it very much. Hope the author finishes another book soon.

Players is the story of a shady businessman's plot to open a Las Vegas casino in Los Angeles. He hires a lawyer to help him, but when the plan includes political bribery, the Mafia, blackmail, and murder, the lawyer begins to form his own plan. The action is fast-paced, and the many sub-plots weave themselves together well. Lots of local color, too. I read it in one sitting!

This is the best of the Dr. Walker books. It's a concise treatice on all the tactical elements needed for around the buoys racing.

Dr Walker's book, Positioning, has provided me with an integrated and logical framework with which to formulate my own racing strategy. The categorisation of beats and runs into category I, II or III conditions and a thorough discusion of the principles pertinent to each, greatly simplify the process of data collection and effective strategic decision making during a race. The book is made very readable by Dr Walker's use of interesting examples from races in soling yachts conducted at a high level (names such as Torben Grael, Buddy Melges and Hans Fogh feature regularly). The book integrates much of the content of Dr Walker's earlier books such as Advanced Racing Tactics into a far more digestible format which is suitable for beginners, but also is beneficial for experienced sailors wishing to achieve true mastery of sail boat strategy and wind shifts.

This is the book by Stuart Walker which cleared a lot of things up for me -- I go back to it constantly, especially when there are areas of my racing that I want cleared up a bit. As he likes to do, the author has plenty of real-race situations from which he draws his experience. This one is out of print, but keep checking out-of-print sources; it is well worth the search!

"Nash Black's Qualifying Laps will leave you asking when this exciting new author will have another book out! Wonderfully original, the book is filled with fast action, realistic description and dialgue, with believable characters you will never forget! Mystery fans must add this one to their collections." Roberta Simpson Brown, Queen of the Cold-Blooded Tales.

If you like a good mystery with a little humor and can't wait to see how the book ends, you will enjoy reading this book.

Qualifying Laps is a good little mystery. A family of nine boys and their mother get involved in trying to solve the mystery of the skeleton found sitting in the Corvette in a Brewster County barn. The book is exciting and even funny in places. Being from Kentucky, I really enjoyed the references to real names and places. This is a good start. We want more!

i think this book was a great it shows God is always there even in hard times. it is about a girl who loves racing but when her father gets sick it's up to her and older brother to keep the farm running , but when some of the horses start getting sick her homework suffers. This book is best if you want excitement i hope you like it like i did

I loved this book so much, that I couldn't put it down!! I am also a horse lover, and Spitfire seemed like a dream horse. But when her dad went into the hospital with lung cancer, I cried for a long time. I hope that I can read this whole series and find out what happens!!

I received this book when I was little and I didn't read it until maybe two years ago...

This book was VERY GOOD...I cannot stress that enough. Even if you aren't a Christian, if you love horses and powerful writing, you'll love this book. I think the seris gets a little cheesy after this because every horse in every racing book wins the triple crown, but anyway..read it...it's inspiring and it's got real problems and real people in it. :)