Faster: How a Jewish Driver, an American Heiress, and a Legendary Car Beat Hitler's Best
By Neal Bascomb
4/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
Winner of the Motor Press Guild Best Book of the Year Award & Dean Batchelor Award for Excellence in Automotive Journalism
For fans of The Boys in the Boat and In the Garden of Beasts, a pulse-pounding tale of triumph by an improbable team of upstarts over Hitler’s fearsome Silver Arrows during the golden age of auto racing
As Nazi Germany launched its campaign of racial terror and pushed the world toward war, three unlikely heroes—a driver banned from the best European teams because of his Jewish heritage, the owner of a faltering automaker company, and the adventurous daughter of an American multimillionaire—banded together to challenge Hitler’s dominance at the Grand Prix, the apex of motorsport. Bringing to life this glamorous era and the sport that defined it, Faster chronicles one of the most inspiring, death-defying upsets of all time: a symbolic blow against the Nazis during history’s darkest hour.
Neal Bascomb
NEAL BASCOMB is the national award–winning and New York Times best-selling author of The Winter Fortress, Hunting Eichmann, The Perfect Mile,Higher, The Nazi Hunters, and Red Mutiny, among others. A former international journalist, he is a widely recognized speaker on the subject of war and has appeared in a number of documentaries. He lives in Philadelphia. For more information, visit http://nealbascomb.com or find him on Twitter at @nealbascomb.
Read more from Neal Bascomb
The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler's Atomic Bomb Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Escape Artists: A Band of Daredevil Pilots and the Greatest Prison Break of the Great War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hunting Eichmann: How a Band of Survivors and a Young Spy Agency Chased Down the World's Most Notorious Nazi Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Faster: How a Jewish Driver, an American Heiress, and a Legendary Car Beat Hitler's Best Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Perfect Mile: Three Athletes, One Goal, and Less Than Four Minutes to Achieve It Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Faster
Related ebooks
Blood and Smoke: A True Tale of Mystery, Mayhem and the Birth of the Indy 500 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Classic Car Adventure: Driving Through History on the Road to Nostalgia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsClassic Car Museum Guide: Motor Cars, Motorcycles & Machinery Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPreston Tucker and His Battle to Build the Car of Tomorrow Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5CARS AT SPEED: Classic Stories from Grand Prix’s Golden Age By Robert Daley Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Engines of Change: A History of the American Dream in Fifteen Cars Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Car Wars: Fifty Years of Backstabbing, Infighting, And Industrial Espionage in the Global Market Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBuilders and Drivers of Sports Cars Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Reckoning Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chrysler's Turbine Car: The Rise and Fall of Detroit's Coolest Creation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Life of the Automobile: The Complete History of the Motor Car Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Moments that made Racing History Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWall Smacker - The saga of the speedway Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Book of Sports Cars - (France and Germany) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Boy: Stirling Moss: A Life in 60 Laps Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBritish Luxury Cars of the 1950s and ’60s Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lost Car Companies of Detroit Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Discovering Lost Automobiles and their Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Trip Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mercedes 190SL Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGreat Cars of All Time: Fascinating stories of the origin, development, and famous feats of the world's most exciting automobiles Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLife At The Limit Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Brabham: The Untold Story of Formula One and Australia's greatest ever racing driver Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLights Out, Full Throttle: The Good the Bad and the Bernie of Formula One Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFormula One Famous Failures Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Staying on Track: The Autobiography Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Ferrari Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBeyond the Limit Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Wars & Military For You
Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sun Tzu's The Art of War: Bilingual Edition Complete Chinese and English Text Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Rise of the Fourth Reich: The Secret Societies That Threaten to Take Over America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Last Kingdom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of War & Other Classics of Eastern Philosophy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Making of the Atomic Bomb Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killing the SS: The Hunt for the Worst War Criminals in History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Daily Creativity Journal Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The God Delusion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/577 Days of February: Living and Dying in Ukraine, Told by the Nation’s Own Journalists Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bill O'Reilly's Legends and Lies: The Civil War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unacknowledged: An Expose of the World's Greatest Secret Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unit 731: Testimony Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The General and the Genius: Groves and Oppenheimer - The Unlikely Partnership that Built the Atom Bomb Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Doctors From Hell: The Horrific Account of Nazi Experiments on Humans Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for Faster
28 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Simply put this is one of the best books on the early days of Grand Prix racing I’ve ever read. It provides a vivid and excellently told portrait of motor sports in the 1930s and how Grand Prix racing and record breaking were subsumed by nationalistic politics - notably the different approaches taken in France and Germany. But even if you have zero interest in motor sports I’d still recommend this as an absorbing human drama centered around the cadre of elite drivers, their relationships on-and off the track, and their insights into the risks they took.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'd been aware of the story of how Rene Dreyfus grabbed a shock victory off the German racing juggernaut in 1938 at the Pau Grand Prix for awhile (I remember seeing a documentary on it (probably on the much-missed "Speed" channel)), and have done my share of reading about racing in the period in general. What the author brings to the table is the story of Lucy Schell, the woman who gave Dreyfus his chance for glory, and a fine rally racer in her own right. Apart from that Bascomb appears to have covered all his bases (including getting input from the Dreyfus family), so this turns out to be a fine introduction to the subject for the general reader.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The last fifth of this book is very good as it builds to the final race, the rest is cursory treatment of too many races and too many people. Still, not bad for understanding the racing scene in the 1920s and 30s, when racing as we know it was invented, this era was probably the pinnacle of the sport.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5History is exciting. Especially when told as well Neal Bascomb told it here. The setting is Europe in the thirties. The subtitle tells, all the complexities of life then. At least as it effects the auto racing community and, really, how it effects people in it. Racers of what ever religion, or none, and of what ever connection to racing they have. Hitler didn't care about sport only the propaganda benefits there of. It all meshes in this book. The book reads as a great novel, but tells a true story. Even without a background in racing, I think most readers would have great pleasure reading this book. Students of auto racing this book, and then keep it near to hand for reading, again and again!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Excellent narrative on the late 1930's Grand Prix racing scene in Europe. Mercedes and AutoUnion were government backed teams and dominated GP racing in that era just prior to WWII. Rene Dreyfus was a jewish racing car driver competing for Delahaye. A Jew racing against the two all conquering German teams sets the scene for a dramatic story. It is very interesting, very well researched and tells the tale of this extraordinary era and Bascomb does it justice.