Customer Reviews

He Crashed Me So I Crashed Him Back: The True Story of the Year the King, Jaws, Earnhardt, and the Rest of NASCAR's Feudin', Fightin' Good Ol' Boys Put Stock Car Racing on the Map

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"He Crashed Me..." is a surprisingly interesting glimpse inside an American cultural phenomenon. Never having been a NASCAR fan I started this book with trepidation expecting to catch the gist of the story and then set it aside--such is the way when given books by sports fanatics to help understand their passion. However, the author's writing keeps a fast paced clip both lively and informative---getting at all the `inside baseball' information, the races, the feuds, the crashes, the fans... without allowing the technical sports jargon and statistics to take over.

I found it to be a clever and insightful look at the characters and culture that have shaped NASCAR and its emergence from a southern sport to a national pastime. Regardless of whether you're a dyed in the wool NASCAR fan this is an entertaining narrative about a part of American culture written in a clever and accessible style for those of us on the outside of this sport looking in.

Bechtel has written what a I view is one of the top books ever written about NASCAR. A lot of terrible ones have been published, and only a few are not only good - but also stand the test of time. This book is definitely a must read today - and I believe it'll hold up in the long run. Bechtel does a great job telling stories that haven't been told before or haven't been in heavy circulation. I've followed NASCAR and the Pettys since the mid 1970s. And this book is full of all kinds of trivia nuggets about them I never knew. He also does a nice job of weaving in American society, economy, and politics of the late 70s/early 80s era into the book - and paints a picture of how they affected NASCAR. I only noticed one known factual error in the book. He says Cale Yarborough's Olds in the 1979 Daytona 500 was sponsored by Holly Farms Chicken (pg 116). Of course, its commonly known the #11 was sponsored by Busch beer in 1979-80. Beyond that though, the stories were fresh, well told, and well documented. Bechtel also does a great job distancing himself and the reader from inferring too much from interviews with drivers, owners, and promoters. Frequently, he interviewed more than one source for a story. Not surprisingly, he got multiple versions of a story from everyone who supposedly had a first-hand encounter with the story. All in all, a great read.

Any NASCAR fans out there? If so, you be excited about a new book just released from Hachette Books. He Crashed Me So I Crashed Him Back, by Mark Bechtel, is the true story of the year the King, Jaws, Earnhardt, and the rest of NASCAR's feudin', fightin' Good Ol' Boys put Stock Car Racing on the map. The year is 1979 (the year I was born), and stock car racing is virtually unknown. Being mostly a southern phenomenon, many Americans had never heard of Richard Petty and Darryl Waltrip, and especially not the young Dale Earnhardt. But in the spring of 1979, races were televised and the fights, the crashes, and the fast driving became an American addiction. I received a copy of this book for review.

Mark Bechtel used research and interviews with the drivers themselves to write this informative history of the birth of modern day NASCAR. For me, this book was really interesting. A southerner myself, not only did all this occur the year I was born, but reading stories of races that took place right here in Richmond, Virgina, was pretty cool. Jeremy and I love racing, and while we don't follow the drivers or watch every race, we do enjoy a good race once in awhile. A friend of ours used to race and we would got to watch him every week for years. The adrenaline and anticipation can't be replicated elsewhere. The noise, the engines, the speed, it all comes together to make a heart pumping event. He Crashed Me So I Crashed Him Back is packed full of action!

Sometimes serious, other times suspenseful, and definitely full of humor, this book was a fun and interesting read. NASCAR wasn't always what it is today. There were those that paved the way for the younger drivers.

The only disappointing thing I found with this book was that when I was done reading it, I had no more of it to read.

This book is entertaining all the way though--and I haven't watched NASCAR for years. I used to enjoy NASCAR racing, but since it went to cookie-cutter cars, too many new tracks that seemingly hope to eliminate driver skill, and too many vanilla drivers, I just don't find it enjoyable anymore. In fact, it bores me silly. Once the faddishness that brought in many new fans dies off (like what is happening to Harley-Davidson motorcyles), I see it going the way of Indy car racing. Why destroy the sport with rampant "sameness." NASCAR was much more fun back when it could actually be considered "stock-car" racing. Nowadays, it might as well be a bunch of jellybeans out there running around. All the cars are the same, they are just a different color with each driver adding a bit of a different flavor.

Anyway, the book took me back to the days of NASCAR that I found enjoyable--cars that are distinctly different from each other, drivers with character pouring out of their ears, with some history and events of the time thrown in for good measure.

As an ex-race fan, I found this book completely enjoyable all the way through. It is extremely well-written, gives us a look at what happened on the track and off, and is just plain fun to read. I haven't read many books about racing, but I can't imagine how any other could be significantly more enjoyable than this one.

If there were more books like this about racing, I would read more books about racing.

I enjoyed this book! This book gives a lot of detail about the 1979 Daytona 500 and the rest of the 1979 season. The book also tells some interesting stories about what was happening in the US during the late 1970's. For someone who was very young during that time it was interesting reading. I think all racing fans and most sports fans would enjoy this book.

In the wide, wild world of sports, NASCAR has never really appealed to me. I grew up a baseball fan, gradually embraced football, and recently discovered an appreciation for the sweet science of basketball (nevermind my own ability at trashcan basketball, where the ball is a waded-up paper towel and the "rim" is a trashcan at ground level). Alas, the Church of the Left Turn hasn't held much appeal for me, despite my being born and raised in the region where it was born and continues to flourish.

That won't change after reading "He Crashed Me So I Crashed Him Back," but I can say that I appreciate that there's more to it than meets the eye. In a rich, detailed and evocative history of one pivotal year in stock-car racing (1979, which is also the year I was born), the book manages to convey not just the excitement of NASCAR on the brink of national popularity, but also examines the cultural tides that turned to provide it with the platform to take over the car-racing landscape.

There are the usual suspects here (The Pettys, Dale Earnhardt in his youth) but also drivers that only a diehard would have known of. The author interweaves their stories effortlessly, creating a narrative that pits Daryl Waltrip and "King Richard" in a no-holds-barred race for the points that comes down literally to the last race of the season. In between are racetrack melees, off-the-course politics, and old-guard-versus-new-blood rivalries that helped launch the sport as more than just a regional curiosity. The book doesn't just cover how NASCAR came into its own, but how the country was in just the right mood for something new to offset the "malaise" of the Carter years.

You may not come away as a convinced racing fan, but you'll recognize that, sport or not, NASCAR is a proud tradition which can claim its roots in the moonshine-running rebels of the Forties and which truly came into its own in 1979. "He Crashed Me So I Crashed Him Back" helps show that moment in all its tobacco-spittin', fistfightin' glory, but it's the side of the sport and its stars that you didn't know about (such as Petty's intellect hidden by an "aw shucks" persona, or Earnhardt's uniquely Oedipal struggles to overcome the legend of his father and forge his own destiny) that gives the book its weight. There are even some damn good laughs thrown in for measure, such as the description of the "fight" between the Allison boys and Cale Yarborough at Daytona while a snowbound nation watched. You won't find a more enjoyable sports book other than this one, and you won't regret starting it because you won't be able to stop until you finish it. It pays to be curious about things that you don't understand or get, especially if your method of self-instruction is as entertaining as "He Crashed Me."

Bought this as a gift but read parts of it prior to giving it. It is an excellent historical and humorous read for anyone who follows NASCAR and enjoys the "Golden Era" of stock car racing.

NASCAR doesn't have the literary pedigree of sports like baseball and boxing, and anyone who reads He Crashed Me So I Crashed Him Back will have a very hard time understanding why. The essence of any great sports book--any nonfiction book, for that matter--is personality; hence Andre Agassi's memoir sells a bazillion copies, while The Roger Federer Story (what, you missed it when it came out in 2007?) barely makes a ripple. This book drips with personality: To say guys like Petty, Waltrip, Earnhardt, France, Suitcase Jake and the dozens of other endearing figures drifting through the garage in the '70s were characters doesn't do them justice. Bechtel recreates that world with humor and precision. Respect too, which is no small thing; it would have been easy to write a book full of caricatures, but He Crashed Me is anything but. It's one thing to collect war stories from the track, something all these guys have a million of and clearly love to tell. It's another to make the reader taste the fumes and smell the cigarette smoke wafting out of David Pearson's car. Bechtel pulls it off.

There's plenty in here to keep diehard NASCAR followers glued to the page; race by race, chapter by chapter, the '79 seasons unfolds like a serialized novel. Fans of modern stock car racing may barely recognize the world depicted in He Crashed Me. The fighting; the seat-of-the-pants race prep; the bear wrestling and on-a-lark skydiving (you are The Man, Cale Yarborough)... it all seems so foreign to a sport that for the most part now is scrubbed clean and corporate. But the cars were fast, the wrecks were scary and plentiful, and the paint tradin' was backed by genuine emotion. It's easy to see why the millions of people snowed in across the country during the '79 Daytona 500 liked what they saw on CBS. It's easy to see why, as Bechtel argues, NASCAR Nation was essentially born that day.

But you don't have to be a citizen of the Nation to appreciate this book. The writing, backed by very solid research and reporting, is superb. And Bechtel offers some interesting and insightful 1970s cultural commentary, explaining why the US of A was ready to embrace stock car racing, even if all those people wearing cowboy hats and giggling at Smokey and the Bandit didn't know it at the time. NASCAR diehard or racing novice, you'll love He Crashed Me. It's one of the funniest and best-written sports books in memory.

I bought this book on a whim for my dad for Christmas. He said he couldn't put it down. He is 60 years old, so he knows most of the drivers who are in this book - they are from his era. It was a HUGE hit with him.

The book has such a catchy title ... how could you not love it! It was refreshing to go back to how Nascar really got its start with the good old boys. Highly recommend the book and all its insights. If you are a racing fan or the spouse of a racing fan, this is a must-add to the collection.