Against Death and Time: One Fatal Season in Racing's Glory Years |  | Author: Brock Yates
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Category: Book
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Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 856,941
Media: Paperback
Pages: 352
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 6 x 0.8
ISBN: 1560257709
Dewey Decimal Number: 796
EAN: 9781560257707
ASIN: 1560257709
Publication Date: November 29, 2005
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Product Description
Against Death and Time chronicles one fatal season in the post-war glory years of racecar driving. It is the story of the dispossessed young men who raced for "the sheer unvarnished hell of it." Yates has been writing for Car and Driver for more than thirty years and is one of the best-known people in the racing world. He raced his own car for a season in a Plimpton-like adventure recorded in one of his six books, Sunday Driver. He has published widely, from Playboy to the Wall Street Journal, and has appeared on every major television network as a racing and automotive industry commentator. Brock integrates unexpected and fascinating detail into this character-driven story of men compelled to compete against themselves, time, and death. His strategy of a fictional narrator observing, interrogating, and reporting on Brock's real-life protagonists imparts the immediacy of fiction to this minutely accurate account. The book is based on Yates's incomparable experience and interviews with dozens of surviving racers, widows, car owners, mechanics, and historians, and his deep research in the archives of the Speedway, the Detroit Public Library Auto Archive, United States Auto Club, Henry Ford Museum, Smithsonian Institute, and contemporary newspapers and periodicals.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 16
 Against Death and Time... in 1955 June 22, 2009
David B. Stout (Bettendorf, Iowa)
The year 1955 was the ultimate nightmare for automobile racing, so much so that Switzweland banned the sport from its borders. Too many daring drivers and unsuspecting fans were killed in the line of fire.
Quite a few well known race drivers lost their live in 1955 in pursuit of the elusive checkered flag. Racing legend Bill Vukovich died while leading the Indianapolis 500, well on his way to a possible third victory in a row. As well, it is estimated that 80 - 100 spectators died at the LeMans race when Pierre Leveghe's Mercedes was involved in an accident which ended when his car was literally launched into the crowd and exploded.
Brock Yates delves deeply into the history of the 1955 racing year and amply describes the mayhem and loss which occurred. His story line is one which he both lived through and saw first hand. Included in this racing history are stories about sprint cars, the Indianapolis racers, LeMans and other championship racing events through the end of the year. He also writes stories about great drivers like Mike Nazaruk, Vukie, Alberto Ascari and Jack McGrath. To the true racing fan, this book is remarkable coverage of what awful things happened in 1955; however, you will probably have be a huge fan to know many of the famous names to appreciate Yates' treatment of them.
Great read but tragic September 5, 2005
L. Crosby (SW Montana)
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
I remember the 50's and 60's racing era. There were many great drivers who paid with their lives. This account is a riviting read typical of Brock Yates
My imagaination is racing! May 23, 2004
Stanley Kiwor (Avon IN)
4 out of 14 found this review helpful
I knew nothing about auto racing & I've never been to a race. I recently bought a ticket to the Indy 500 & saw this book displayed in a book store in Avon IN, west of Indianapolis. As background & to prepare for my first race experience, I read this book. It is absolutley superb. An informative, history based, page turning, imaginative narrative. If you are a racing enthusiast I believe you will not be able to put the book down! It's a winner!
 Speedreaders.info review October 25, 2009
Speed Readers (USA)
Against Death and Time: One Fatal Season in Racing's Glory Years
by Brock Yates
Against Death and Time is factual and, รก la Yates, well written and highly readable. It recounts all the tragic events of 1955 that had such a tremendous impact on motorsports for years to follow.
Racers, even the purely amateur sporting set, recognize there are certain dangers inherent in the practice of their chosen activity. Normally the dangers involve the racers or their machines as courses and tracks are surely devised to offer spectators, and the crewing team members, safety from the gasoline hauling, speeding missiles. Yet, in spite of ever-increasing precautions and safety devices, the fatal accident(s) occur even into the millennium. Sometimes, despite those best laid plans, events conspire -- and so it was in 1955.
Early in the year two drivers, a world champ and an Indy 500 winner respectively, died in the spring -- Alberto Ascari while running in the French Grand Prix and, just days later, Bill Vukovitch during the Indy 500. Come summer, again in France, during Le Mans -- miscalculations, accidents and cars off the track into the crowd with nearly 100 spectators killed.
And then, only one -- but that one was so well-known with such a high profile that the world would hear of it. James Dean had wrapped the film he was working on so the studio could no longer forbid him to compete and he was enroute to the road race... but you know the story.
And if you don't, the pages of Yates' book are a good place to start. Yates writes of all these events in a yarn-spinnin' style that gives background and entertains while informing.
And, of course, all these news making "incidents" only fed the anti-racing press giving them new arguments to fuel their rhetoric. From the racing point of view, it didn't help that one of those against was pretty high profile himself. William Randolph Hearst was the owner and publisher of a major circulation newspaper, The Los Angeles Examiner, and often shared his views in print.
Yates tells the story well making one wonder yet again why those books used to teach history are so dry and off-putting. Say, maybe if you share this book with a young person, he or she will find history an appealing subject. But do read it yourself before passing it along.
Helen Hutchings, Copyright 2009 (Speedreaders.info)
 How Do You Want to Die? August 30, 2004
Christopher Rollyson (Chicago, IL USA)
27 out of 29 found this review helpful
3.5 stars. This is a multifaceted, interesting read that succeeds at its key goals while falling short of greatness. The author, a respected automotive journalist, does an excellent job at creating cameos of numerous drivers who risked their lives to drive. Many died in 1955, one of racing's most lethal years.
The book describes the historical context of some of the social forces in 1950s America as well as the growth of (mostly) American auto racing and its significance to American culture and the auto industry. For readers who are not familiar with drivers and the history of the Indianapolis 500, the roots of NASCAR and the national dirt track races, this book will pique their interest in learning more. It contrasts the world of "professional" American drivers, The Indy 500 and the dirt tracks, with the comparatively genteel world of sports car drivers in the U.S. and Europe. Professional drivers had working class backgrounds and were daredevils that had returned from World War II, while sports car drivers were wealthy and drove for amusement rather than purses. However, they had in common that they died behind the wheel.
It is obvious that Yates knows his subject well and is mesmerized by the drivers' unabashed willingness to risk their lives to drive. The cars and safety precautions were so primitive that drivers died in most races described. Poetically, Yates points out that the crashed cars were rebuilt and put back on the track, often within days. The race goes on. He asserts that, seen from today's standpoint, the drivers appear to be mad due to the risks they take.
I was hooked by the Wall Street Journal review that quoted a philosophical snippet in which a journalist was interviewing a renowned Italian driver. He asked how the driver could take such risks behind the wheel. The driver shot back, "How do you want to die?" He was grounded in the recognition that death awaits us all and that he felt lucky to choose how he wanted to die. Several drivers described that they lived when they drove. Their attitude seemed to be that death was a small price for living.
Unfortunately, Yates cannot quite get comfortable with this, and his point of view remains that of a horrified, fascinated onlooker. The fact that we are all racing against death and time is an element that he does not contemplate, one that would have put the book in classic territory. We can only decide what kind of race we want to run. The drivers he described all knew the risks, and many stated flat out that they expected to die young. Similarly, racing spectators knew the risks of watching at close quarters, as they vicariously sat poised behind the wheels of their favorite drivers. Yates struggles to describe and understand this mystery, but he cannot seem to accept it.
Although I do not have first-hand knowledge of the publishing process, I infer that this book suffers from poor editing. The author was not guided in balancing and maintaining the continuity of several threads in the book: the cameos of the drivers, the historical reportage of the period and the personal experience of the fictitious journalist who interviews the drivers in the book. The later chapters read more like a novel that takes place in France and Italy, and the reporter's personal exploits eclipse the experience of the drivers and races. His account of bedding the daughter of a Hollywood mogul detract from the book's focus without adding much value. The last major thread was the persona of James Dean and his rise to stardom and subsequent fatal crash in late 1955. The idea of using Dean to personify "devil may care" risk taking was an excellent attempt at intertextuality with Rebel Without a Cause, but the flow was compromised by being uneven, disjointed and not fully developed. The last chapter is an attempt to pull everything together in a conclusion, but it fails to investigate the white elephant in the room, the philosophical element. Finally, the proofreading was exceptionally poor, with constant misspellings of English, French and Italian words.
In conclusion, this is an ambitious book that succeeds as a fascinating depiction of the lives of drivers, racing and 1950s America. Yates' strengths as a reporter are obvious, but he is clearly not a novelist. If the book had addressed the philosophical element of the subject and editing had helped to integrate and balance the other threads better, it could have easily been 5+ stars.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 16
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