Sunday Money: Speed! Lust! Madness! Death! A Hot Lap Around America with Nascar [Hardcover]

Jeff MacGregor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 26, 2005

NASCAR racing, once considered no more than a regional circuit of moonshiners pounding around low-country dirt tracks in a cloud of red dust and cliché, has somehow become the fastest-growing spectator sport in America -- and the buxom, bumpkin darling of Madison Avenue. With 75 million fans and its popularity soaring in every corner of the country, NASCAR is a 200-mile-an-hour traveling tent-and-revival show, a platinum-plated, multibillion-dollar V-8 hero machine -- a sports entertainment empire built at the very crossroads of pop culture, corporate commerce, and American mythology.

Smart, funny, and profane, Sunday Money is the kaleidoscopic account of an entire season on the NASCAR circuit. Driving 48,000 miles in a tiny motorhome, writer Jeff MacGregor and his wife, an award-winning photographer, covered 36 races at 23 tracks in 18 states, from Daytona to Darlington, New Hampshire to California, from the Wal-Mart to the Waldorf, profiling the lives of superstar drivers like Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Tony Stewart, their crews, and their fans, across the grinding reach of a 40-week season.

But this is not just a behind-the-scenes chronicle of America's loudest pastime. It is the story of a hundred stories; of red states and blue, of splendid Rebel lizards and golden Yankee hotshoes, of mystic true believers and their holy roll of honored ghosts. In the tradition of On the Road, Travels with Charley, and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Sunday Money is a snapshot of American culture -- of race, religion, class, sex, money, politics, and fame -- taken from the window of a moving car, a brilliantly observed, keenly rendered, and darkly comic portrait of America.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Author Jeff MacGregor was committed to understanding NASCAR, so instead of merely dropping in on a race or two, he traveled the nearly yearlong season in an RV with his wife, photographer Olya Evanitsky. The result is many books in one. It's a vivid history of the sport's roots, as it grows from a rowdy way for Florida good ol' boys to blow off steam to being a titan of American culture with a fan base of 75 million. It also covers a broad swath of personalities within NASCAR--from the widely loved and even more widely loathed driver Jeff Gordon to the iconic Richard Petty to Dale Earnhardt, whose mythic power grew exponentially after his death at Daytona (death is never far from anyone’s mind in NASCAR). Finally, Sunday Money is a memoir--MacGregor chronicles exactly what life is like when a married couple blows their savings on a massive RV and logs 48,000 miles within the blasting radius of race after race after race.

MacGregor is funny, and it's interesting to watch how a man skeptical of the sport's allure at the beginning of the adventure is sucked in as the story goes along. As a writer, he's in no hurry, knocking off several paragraphs in the interest of a single whimsical analogy if he sees fit. Much of the time the diversions hit the mark, (sometimes they don't) and it's nice to see an editor let a talented writer like MacGregor run loose. NASCAR loyalists may enjoy the behind-the-scenes scoop even if they don't necessarily need to be introduced to who the drivers are. But non-fans who have been wondering why racing has become so huge so fast, may understand a little better after reading Sunday Money. It's a huge book, a massive sprawling narrative, but for a sport that is active nearly every weekend of the year and is growing ever larger and more successful, the length seems perfect. --John Moe

Photos from the Sunday Money 2002 NASCAR Tour

NASCAR star Jeff Gordon autographs for fans	Tony Stewart wins the NASCAR Winston Cup	Fans pack the stands for the Pepsi 400
NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr.	Ward Burton's car pits mid-race during the NAPA 500	Cars race around the track in Charlotte

Jeff MacGregor's Top Ten Tips for Your First NASCAR Race

10. Day race? Bring ear plugs, hat, binoculars. 9. Night race? Bring ear plugs, hat, beer goggles. 8. At Daytona and Talladega, there’s no such thing as too much sunblock. SPF 45. Apply liberally. Repeat, as needed, until you slip from your seat like a watermelon seed. 7. Yes, NASCAR is expanding everywhere and very fast, but effortful puns on the word Madagascar will only lead to embarrassment. 6. Your copy of Sunday Money is an excellent conversation starter for making new friends at the track. Thanks to its quilted cover, it also doubles as a comfy seat-cushion and a stylish windshield sun-screen. 5. Drivers cannot hear you yelling encouragement from the 58th row when they’re actually lapping the track. This will not stop the high school kid behind you from doing so. 4. Like room service Eggs Benedict, the Jumbo Grilled Turkey Legs at any racetrack always sound far better than they are. Avoid them. Let them thrive in the happy hunger of your imagination, rather than deliver their sad reality to your somersaulting innards. Life bears enough disappointments. 3. Women, despite the signs you’ll see in the third turn campground, there’s no such thing as a "Free Trackside Mammogram." Don’t let the Mardi Gras beads fool you; there are shockingly few accredited radiologists working the infield on race weekend. 2. All-purpose, all-context catch phrase guaranteed to make a NASCAR newbie sound like an old hand? "Go, Junior!" Appropriate any time! 1. If your tailgate margarita machine doesn’t make at least ten horsepower on the blender-drink dyno, don’t bother. Go big, baby, or don’t go.

From Publishers Weekly

Starting at the beginning of the 2001 NASCAR season, Sports Illustrated contributor MacGregor and his photographer wife attended almost every race on the circuit in an attempt to understand the sport's wild appeal. The author's hopped-up reporting of the races, the fans and the history bolsters his admiration of the drivers and their skills. Traveling across the country, making pit stops in Wal-Mart parking lots, MacGregor becomes one with the throngs who worship weekly at the altars of speed and death in places like Richmond, Va.; Bristol, Tenn.; and Rockingham, N.C. As he reports the highlights of each race—who won, who wrecked, which racer had the sexiest women in his company, which fans were the wackiest—he neatly weaves the history of the sport into his story to measure the distance racing has traveled from its days on dirt tracks with unregulated stock cars to mammoth stadiums and corporate sponsorships. Through interviews with driver Jeff Gordon and others, MacGregor demystifies these celebrities' aura—they're ordinary folks—while at the same time proving that the glitter of being a winning NASCAR driver has propelled Gordon and others into a regal realm far above their fans' station. 8 pages of color photos not seen by PW. Agent, Heather Schroder. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Harper; First Edition edition (April 26, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060094710
• ISBN-13: 978-0060094713
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (47 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,206,393 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wit and wisdom, May 24, 2005

By 

Stephen Lundeen (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sunday Money: Speed! Lust! Madness! Death! A Hot Lap Around America with Nascar (Hardcover)

I wouldn't consider myself a died-in-the-wool huge NASCAR fan, but this book was terrific. MacGregor's style is full of wit and yet he peels back much of the unknown about NASCAR and it's followers. He more than satisfies our curiosity and, as a result, leaves us not only smarter about NASCAR, but wiser about the kaleidoscope of our society.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read It, May 16, 2005

By 

E. McD (Washington DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sunday Money: Speed! Lust! Madness! Death! A Hot Lap Around America with Nascar (Hardcover)

Perhaps a little mad himself (he and his wife cash their savings in for a dee-lux motorhome), a better author I couldn't imagine for taking me on this raucous roll around the racetracks, and through the heart of America. SUNDAY MONEY is a sexy, witty, colorful portrait of the world that is NASCAR.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "A big V-8 sounds like America.", August 15, 2005

By 

Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sunday Money: Speed! Lust! Madness! Death! A Hot Lap Around America with Nascar (Hardcover)

Until reading Sunday Money, I had little interest in books about motorsport racing in general, and about NASCAR in particular. However, since childhood, I have had a keen interest in books which focus on adventures during a journey of some kind. Homer's Odyssey, for example, and Cervantes' Don Quixote. More recently, William Least Heat-Moon's Blue Highways and River Horse. To me, such books are like "magic carpets" which transport me to unfamiliar cultures and often to distant centuries. That said, Sunday Money is one of the most entertaining as well as most informative books I have read in recent years. MacGregor and his wife (an award-winning photographer) committed ten months and a small fortune to traveling almost 50,000 miles throughout the United States inorder to observe a complete NASCAR racing season first-hand. As I began to read this book, these were the questions of greatest interest to me:

1. What were the origins of NASCAR?

2. What have been the most significant developments since then?

3. Most people observe NASCAR races on television or at a distance from the on-track competition. What did the MacGregors (especially Jeff) learn about NASCAR racing which can only be experienced "up close and personal"?

4. Why has NASCAR racing become so popular?

5. What are the most common misconceptions about it and those who are so devoted to it?

6. In MacGregor's opinion, what does NASCAR reveal about our society?

7. What were the MacGregors' fondest memories of their 35-state journey?

8. How do male and female perspectives on NASCAR racing differ?

9. Why does NASCAR racing remain "overwhelmingly, blindingly white"?

10. For those who have not as yet driven a competition car, what's it like?

MacGregor answers each of these and other questions for those who know little and care less about motorsport racing. My guess (only a guess) is that several are the same questions which MacGregor had when he and his wife began their journey of exploration and discovery within the NASCAR World. It was a pleasure to tag along with them.