In the forty-year period between 1951 and 1991, Canadian sports car competition underwent a massive change, transforming itself from an amateur recreational pastime to a commercialized profession and from an individual sport to a spectacle for mass consumption. The Chequered Past is the story of the struggle over power and purpose within the Canadian auto sport that led to this transformation. The first comprehensive history of sports car racing and rallying in Canada, The Chequered Past traces the efforts of the national governing body - the Canadian Auto Sport Clubs (CASC) - to bring its sports car competition up to a 'world class' level, and to manage the consequences of those efforts in the second half of the twentieth century. David Charters traces the social origins of the sport and the major trends that shaped it: professionalism, technological change, rising costs, and the influence of commercial sponsors. Charters argues that while early enthusiasts set the sport on a course toward professionalism that would eventually produce world-class Canadian events and racers, that course would also ultimately change the purpose of the sport: from personal recreation to mass entertainment. As technological innovations drove up the costs of competing at the top ranks, racers were forced to rely on sponsors, who commercialized and ultimately gained control of the sport. The end result, Charters argues, was the marginalization of the amateur competitor and of the CASC itself. Based on extensive research into the CASC's records and dozens of interviews with former competitors and officials, The Chequered Past opens a window into the rich but virtually unknown history of the auto sport, and claims for it a place in Canadian sports history.

"Fascinated with the rich tradition and youthful creativity of London in the 1960s and longing to leave suburban America, a wide-eyed twenty-year-old Californian named Peter Schlesinger arrived in 1968 with his partner, David Hockney, to study painting at the Slade School of Art. He stayed on for ten years and moved in some of the city's most intriguing social and artistic circles. Manolo Blahnik, Paloma Picasso, Ossie Clark, Cecil Beaton, Bianca Jagger, Christopher Isherwood, and Bryan Ferry - all became friends of the bright and talented Schlesinger, along with other prominent figures in the worlds of art, ballet, music, photography, film, and society." "Schlesinger was one of Hockney's favorite models and he appears in many of his most important paintings of this period, but he was a gifted artist in his own right, with a tireless interest in documenting the amazing world of London bohemia in which he found himself. His privileged position during these extraordinary years resulted in literally thousands of intimate photographs of friends and acquaintances in everyday situations, taken both at home in London and on numerous trips to continental Europe. Featuring 180 of the most artful and revealing images, Checkered Past guides us with a wry eye through the artists' studios, fashion shows, grand country houses, and gay discos that made London such a magnet during the late 1960s and early 1970s."--BOOK JACKET.

The culmination of three years of exhaustive research, this text compellingly recounts how a monochrome and embattled Britain was re-energised and coloured by two tone and its legacy.

Winning came naturally for Al Unser, Jr. He had a gift for finding the fast line on the track and he possessed a boisterous and lovable personality. Fans and the press adored him. Behind this affable persona, an appetite for drugs and alcohol was destroying his private life. Unser's battle to climb out of that cave is one of the great stories in motorsports. A Checkered Past is an unblinking story of triumph, tragedy, and the road to recovery.

Weaving together stories from elite science, cutting-edge technology, and popular culture, Fleming examines issues of health and navigation in the 1830s, drought in the 1890s, aircraft safety in the 1930s, and world conflict since the 1940s.

“Marilyn Yalom has written the rare book that illuminates something that always has been dimly perceived but never articulated, in this case that that the power of the chess queen reflects the evolution of female power in the western world.” —Cleveland Plain Dealer Everyone knows that the queen is the most dominant piece in chess, but few people know that the game existed for five hundred years without her. It wasn't until chess became a popular pastime for European royals during the Middle Ages that the queen was born and was gradually empowered to become the king's fierce warrior and protector. Birth of the Chess Queen examines the five centuries between the chess queen's timid emergence in the early days of the Holy Roman Empire to her elevation during the reign of Isabel of Castile. Marilyn Yalom, inspired by a handful of surviving medieval chess queens, traces their origin and spread from Spain, Italy, and Germany to France, England, Scandinavia, and Russia. In a lively and engaging historical investigation, Yalom draws parallels between the rise of the chess queen and the ascent of female sovereigns in Europe, presenting a layered, fascinating history of medieval courts and internal struggles for power.