What is it that makes a man strap himself into an automobile and drive it hundreds of laps around a track at speeds surpassing 200 miles per hour? Critically acclaimed journalist G. Wayne Miller decided to find out by spending a year on the NASCAR circuit with Roush Racing's legendary owner Jack Roush and his four title-contending Winston Cup drivers: Mark Martin, Jeff Burton, Matt Kenseth, and Kurt Busch. Miller plumbs the allure of speed and the exploding popularity of stock-car racing through the dramatic 2001 season, which opened with the most famous Daytona 500 in history, when NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt died as his car slammed into the wall on the final turn. Miller takes us inside the minds and behind the wheels of the of the hottest drivers of the past two seasons, as they cope with the thrills and the dangers along the way to the Cup. Miller also takes us inside Roush Racing, a $125 million business, showing a side of NASCAR that few fans ever get to see. For longtime fans and curious newcomers alike, Men and Speed takes you for a wild ride through the fastest sport in the land.

Hot rodding has always been about taking something that Detroit built and making it leaner and faster. At the epicenter of the movement was a cast of driven men who designed and manufactured the parts that made it all possible. This book takes an appreciative look back at the early hot rodders who worked out of their garages, basements, and backyards, and the “speed equipment” they developed. In this mammoth volume, Paul Smith examines the stories behind two dozen speed equipment manufacturers and the go-fast goodies they designed, developed, and sold. Drawing upon hundreds of hours of interviews conducted with these founding fathers of hot rodding, Smith details the work of industry icons such as Iskenderian, Edelbrock, Evans, Hilborn, Navarro, Offenhauser, Sharp, Weiand, Ansen, and Kong. Illustrated with more than 200 period photos and filled with firsthand accounts of the birth of hot rodding—and the automotive aftermarket industry—this book is a truly fitting celebration of the names that became synonymous with speed.

A history of the Daytona 500 and NASCAR ranges from the first race in 1959 to the death of Dale Earnhardt in a collision during the 2001 race, offering a glimpse into the world of stock car racing and the lives of the racers.

A history of movement, transportation, and speed involving animals, men, and machines.

Reid Antony Railton, Cheshire-born automotive engineer par excellence, created an extraordinary range of cars. He rose to renown during the 1930s as chief engineer at Thomson & Taylor, Brooklands-based racing-car builders. There he realised the dreams of that era's top men of speed, including Tim Birkin, Malcolm Campbell, Whitney Straight, John Cobb, Raymond Mays and Goldie Gardner. His great cars powered them all to sensational racing and record-breaking success. This magisterial book, by one of the world's foremost automotive historians, tells Reid Railton's personal and professional story in superb detail and fascinating depth, with special focus on Reid's unique insights--amounting to genius--and technical accomplishments.

Now on Netflix, #5 most watched movie on the site in its first week: Speed Kills, the movie adaptation, screen-credited as based on the book Speed Kills, by Arthur J. Harris John Travolta plays Ben Aronoff, a fictionalized Don Aronow. Everybody liked and loved Don Aronow. He was powerboating's favorite, best-known, and most flamboyant racer and boat builder, the brilliant creator and designer of the famous Cigarette go-fast boats that broke speed records on the water. In everything he did, he consistently pushed the limits, always at full throttle, testing himself. In ocean races, in the worst of conditions, he was at his best. A competitor described him: "We'd be taking a terrible pounding and I'd be almost beaten down to my knees when Don would come alongside and grin from ear to ear, then take off. God, he was so demoralizing." That was what won him two world championships. It also carried over to his reputation of being not only a ladies' man, but whose girlfriends were often married. Don was the living sales pitch for his boats - he sold magic. For the price, you could be more than you could ever imagine yourself as. You could be Don Aronow. Who bought from him? Well-off businessmen in middle age crisis - and the CIA and the Israeli Mossad - kings, presidents-for-life - and George Bush. If you're thinking James Bond, so was he - he named one of his winning boats 007. He was also Miami incarnate - everything great and dark and impenetrable and fascinating about the place. He was Bond - except he played on both sides of the law. You probably never would have known about Cigarettes had dope smugglers not preferred them. Nobody could catch them in them. Then came the Reagan-era Drug War, and Bush got Don a high-publicity federal contract to build patrol boats that were faster than those he'd sold to the smugglers. They were named Blue Thunder. The Miami Herald wrote: The man who designed the roaring Cigarette speedboats, favorite vehicle of oceangoing drug smugglers, has built a better boat, one that will snuff the Cigarettes. Watch out dopers. A crack of Blue Thunder, faster than a shiver, stable as a platform, is about to become the state of the salt-watery art on the side of the law. What did the smugglers think? Because then Don quietly and bizarrely sold his company with the contract to the biggest pot smuggler on the East Coast, Ben Kramer. It was a quintessential Miami moment - maybe the Miami moment of all time. Why did he do that? At the time, the public didn't know what he did. Years later, NBC News broke the story. Said Tom Brokaw: By the time drug agents on the trail put it all together, the Kramers and the government were already partners. That's right, the boats the Customs Service uses to catch drug smugglers were built for Customs by convicted drug dealers who used laundered drug money to buy the boat company. And you thought you'd heard everything. Actually, the feds had found out and made Aronow undo the sale. But a year later a grand jury was poised to indict Kramer, and subpoenaed Don to testify. The day before he would have, he was murdered in broad daylight. Nobody saw the shots - but they heard them, and then the high-pitched whine of his shiny white Mercedes sports coupe, the gas pedal floored by his dead foot - full throttle. And they saw the shooter's black Lincoln Town Car get away. Somebody was afraid of what he was going to say. The cops concluded it was Kramer - and everyone who thought that was right. But actually, Kramer seemed the least affected by what Don probably would have testified to - and his absence didn't stop two grand juries from indicting Kramer, and two trial juries from convicting him. Were the waters deeper than that?

The National Book Critics Circle Award–winning author delivers a collection of essays that serve as the perfect “antidote to mansplaining” (The Stranger). In her comic, scathing essay “Men Explain Things to Me,” Rebecca Solnit took on what often goes wrong in conversations between men and women. She wrote about men who wrongly assume they know things and wrongly assume women don’t, about why this arises, and how this aspect of the gender wars works, airing some of her own hilariously awful encounters. She ends on a serious note— because the ultimate problem is the silencing of women who have something to say, including those saying things like, “He’s trying to kill me!” This book features that now-classic essay with six perfect complements, including an examination of the great feminist writer Virginia Woolf’s embrace of mystery, of not knowing, of doubt and ambiguity, a highly original inquiry into marriage equality, and a terrifying survey of the scope of contemporary violence against women. “In this series of personal but unsentimental essays, Solnit gives succinct shorthand to a familiar female experience that before had gone unarticulated, perhaps even unrecognized.” —The New York Times “Essential feminist reading.” —The New Republic “This slim book hums with power and wit.” —Boston Globe “Solnit tackles big themes of gender and power in these accessible essays. Honest and full of wit, this is an integral read that furthers the conversation on feminism and contemporary society.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Essential.” —Marketplace “Feminist, frequently funny, unflinchingly honest and often scathing in its conclusions.” —Salon