Speed: Stories of Survival from Behind the Wheel (Adrenaline) [Paperback]

Clint Willis (Editor), Nate Hardcastle (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 17, 2002 | Series: Adrenaline

Adrenaline offers all the thrills and power of speed with exhilarating writing about NASCAR, speed records, third-world road trips, driving in war zones, getaways, “pick-up” competitions (drag races and games of chicken), and all the other activities that offer adventure on wheels. Speed includes passages from Road Fever by erstwhile adventurer Tim Cahill; a selection from Charles Portis’s anarchic The Dog of the South; a description of driving across Africa from Stuart Stephens’s Malaria Dreams; E. B. White’s elegiac essay on the Model T; a piece from Roads by Larry McMurtry; a selection from The Wildest Ride: A History of NASCAR; and more. 16 black-and-white photos heighten these pulse-pounding stories.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

What does one do with the theme of speed? To answer that question, the editors have brought together fiction and nonfiction from sources as varied as the top speeds of today's automobiles. Put a little Tom Wolfe here and some Jack Kerouac there, mix with a bit of Evan Green, then add Stuart Stevens and Russell Banks to taste, and you've got a fascinating book. Some of the works are from classics such as Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities and Kerouac's On the Road, while others are less celebrated, like Charles Portis's marvelous The Dog of the South or Larry McMurty's Roads. It is perhaps the sheer variety of stories, motley characters, different settings, and vehicles involved that make this book so compelling. Here, speed becomes a force to be dealt with, a record to be broken, a fear to be conquered, and a sensation to be experienced. On the whole, this book presents a new perspective on the quest for speed. While some libraries will have many of the works excerpted here, this thematic collection is still recommended.DEric C. Shoaf, Brown Univ. Lib., Providence, RI
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

From the publisher of such adrenaline-rush anthologies as Rough Water: Stories of Survival from the Sea (1999) comes this high-octane collection of fiction and nonfiction about the thrill of the road. As with all the titles in this series, the editor casts his net widely, pulling together excerpts from such novels as Kerouac's On the Road and Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities; profiles of renowned racers A. J. Foyt and Junior Johnson; portraits of the life of a NASCAR crew member; and wonderful, offbeat stories about the "bush taxis" of Nigeria, a rally race through Europe and Latin America, and a cross-Sahara odyssey at the wheel of a Toyota Land Cruiser. The mixture of literature and reportage, of first-person drama and third-person observation, and of fiction and nonfiction works particularly well here, as each entry brings out another aspect of why road trips never lose their appeal. With the recent release-to-video of speed-intensive films such as drive and The Fast and the Furious, this title may prove to be quite popular. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press (April 17, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560253916
• ISBN-13: 978-1560253914
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,485,690 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pretty Good . . . But -, May 19, 2002

By 

Andrew Entwistle (Schodack, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Speed: Stories of Survival from Behind the Wheel (Adrenaline) (Paperback)

First of all, the stories in the book are not necessarily the ones listed above. Nothing by McMurtry, or EB White, or the history of NASCAR. Just be aware. Since I'm sending in a correction, it may be fixed by now.
Now, what are in the book are 15 stories, and the 10 that are non-fiction are terrific. You'll go into the pits at NASCAR, on the track at Indy and across numerous continents during road rallies. The writing is great and the excerpts do what excerpts should - they had me in the store looking for the whole work. Nate Hardcastle made wonderful choices.
But . . . here's the but. Five stories - a full one hundred pages are fiction, and not really very exciting fiction at that. Maybe it's me - maybe I just don't get it - but the book's subtitle is Stories of Survival, not Best Writing about Cars. I know there were plenty of other exciting nonfiction stories that could have gone in here, better in keeping with the Adrenaline label. You'll still enjoy this - the first ten stories are worth 5 stars by themselves - but nearly 1/3 of the book is not quite what I expected.