Note: this being, among other things, a site about slot car drag racing, you might wonder why there aren't any references below to books or magazines about these topics. Other than a very few woefully out-of- date publications written in the sixties and early seventies, the books are non-existent. There are currently two printed and one e-zine mags about slot car racing published in the U.S., and their general (and proportional) coverage of slot car drag racing, for whatever reason, varies from zero to almost nothing.
Auto Racing Technology, Engineering, and Other Things Mechanical
The Chevrolet Racing Engine - Bill Jenkins
w. L. Schreib - S-A Design, Santa Fe Springs, CA - 1976
Why, you might ask, would a Ford guy recommend a book about Chevy motors. First, because
it's by Bill Jenkins and I'm not that much of an idiot, and second, because what it truly
has to say is neither dated nor manufacturer-specific. It's really a 160-page treatise on
methodology, testing, and thinking "outside the box," some things all of us
could stand to do a little more of. If you've noticed the Pro Stock Truck results lately,
Da Grump evidently hasn't forgotten how to build a small block, either.
Basin and Range - 1981
The Curve of Binding Energy - 1974
The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed - John McPhee - Farrar, Straus,
Giroux, New York, NY - 1973
When the person who is arguably America's best current essayist deals with technical and
scientific matters, interesting and very readable books result. Basin And Range examines
geology and plate-tectonics from both modern and historical perspectives. The Curve of
Binding Energy is a look at the process and philosophy of designing nuclear devices
and weapons, as well as the sort of person who does so for a living. The Deltoid
Pumpkin Seed covers the efforts of an independent group of inventors and designers
struggling to perfect what can best be described as a cross between a lifting body and a
rigid, helium-filled airship. For additional remarks on and works by McPhee, see the
section "Things of General Interest," below.
The Gran Prix Car: 1954/1966 - L J K Setright - W. W. Norton &
Co., New York, NY - 1968
Actually the third in a series of utterly comprehensive books on the design and
construction of Gran Prix cars, Setright's volume is a worthy successor to the earlier
works by the late L. E. Pomeroy. Beyond the historical value of the engineering
examination and analysis it contains, it also offers valuable insight into the methodology
of "competitive" engineering. (translation: "How in the **** do we make it
faster this year, Alfredo?") And no, I didn't leave out the periods in his
name by accident, he did - on purpose, one gathers. From the generation of Brits
who brought you the last of the "stiff-upper-lip" school of racing.
Drag Racing Monthly - (monthly) - General Media
Automotive Group, New York, NY
If you don't already get and read this magazine, cover to-cover, every month, what exactly
are you doing here?
No car stereos, no "50 Cool Paint Tricks You Can Do at Home With a Floor Mat and an
Icecube Tray!", and, generally, no b.s. All the NHRA news and editorials the Glendora
crew can't seem to squeeze in between the
ads in National Dragster®, IHRA and independent circuit news,
solid tech articles, comprehensive examinations of various Class technologies, history,
nostalgia, etc., etc. Interesting note no.1): there is much to recommend in the continuing
series of excellent tech articles by David Vizard. Being (one presumes) English, Dave got
his start by messing around with stone-age 4-bangers, as evidenced by his first major
book, "Building The BMC A-Series Engine," still the reference
work for those motors. Interesting note no. 2): the Chairman of General Media,
publishers of Drag Racing Monthly, is Bob Guccione. That name ring any
bells?
Prepare to Win (?)
Tune to Win (?)
Engineer to Win - Carol Smith - (publication & other
data when I remember where I put the books)
Three easy-to-read books about the preparation, maintenance, and general well-being of
race cars. Beyond the nuts and bolts, Smith preaches common sense, failure analysis, and
practicality, as well as a frame of reference designed to avoid having things fall off
when you don't want them to. Engineer to Win has the best brief (50-60 page)
introduction to general metallurgy you're ever likely to read. Obviously missing from
Smith's list is the book we all know someone is going to write someday: Cheat to Win.
Kent's Mechanical Engineers' Handbook - J. Wiley & Sons,
New York, NY - Editions since 1895
Machinery's Handbook - Industrial Press, Inc., New York, NY - Sequential
Editions since 1914
Think of them as the Thomas Register for mechanical engineering problems.
They may not have all the answers, but they sure do have a lot of them. Granted,
you may or may not be worried about steam boilers or leather pulley belts, but there's something
in these pages (all 5000-plus of them) that will solve some problem you encounter
when your favorite Font Of All Meaningful Knowledge is unavailable. You can bore people to
death, for instance, by explaining all the detail differences between 48, 60, 80, and
128-pitch gears. Older editions are frequently available used, and are lots
cheaper than new ones.
NACA Papers - NASA Langley Research Center Archives
(http://naca.larc.nasa.gov/ if
you're interested)
You didn't actually think a "NACA Duct" was designed by some guy named Joe Naca,
did you? Well, it wasn't. Nor were a great many other things aircraft and
aerodynamic-related. During the "Golden Age" of aviation, the National Advisory
Committee for Civil Aeronautics (the predecessor to today's NASA) was the generator and
national repository of voluminous research on things like drag, streamlining, aerodynamic
forces, etc. Sound familiar? Unless you own something capable of going transonic, you'll
find abstracts and papers from the 20s and 30s are the most useful. There is a great
deal of material in these archives, not all of which is labeled in a
comprehensible-to-the-non-aerogeek manner. Be prepared to dig and read. Note:
viewing can be slow as many
of the early documents are done as .GIF files, a result, I presume, of transposition from
microfilm originals.
Racecar Engineering - (bi-monthly) - Q. Editions Ltd.,
Caterham, Surrey, England
What the Big Boys (and a selected number of the Not-So-Big-Boys) are doing with all that
money you hear about. Primarily a road-race publication with Indycar moments, the pages of
this magazine offer either a) a technical Alice in Wonderland feast, or b) your worst
nightmare involving both your wallet and checkbook on fire.
Hydraulically-actuated, load-sensitive, movable ballast that shifts in two dimensions
depending where you are on the racecourse? You betcha. Computer-mapable, variable venturi and
length induction systems? Uh huh. Where else can you find lots of ads for those
nifty 6 and 7-speed fwd gearboxes with the steering-wheel-mounted paddle shifters? Just
what your wife's Honda Civic needs.
Smokey Yunik's Performance Secrets - Smokey Yunik w. L. Schreib - S-A
Designs, Brea, CA - 1983
Those of you who have had the chance to read some of Smokey's columns in past issues of Circle
Track Magazine or who have some idea of the history and scope of his accomplishments
already know why his ideas are worth paying attention to. Anyone who can (for a time, at
any rate) pass off a 7/8 scale car as the real deal to NASCAR gets my vote. Always a big
fan of volumetric efficiency, Smokey's ideas and theories on motors and combustion are
equally thought-provoking.
Thompson Trophy Racers - Roger Huntington - Motorbooks
International, Osceola, WI - 1989
Back when men were men and wings were wood. Or tube, with fabric covering. Or aluminum
monocoque. From the proverbial chalk marks on the shop floor to converted surplus WWII
fighters, the Thompson Trophy may have marked the American high water mark of both
"hands-on" engineering and the public's interest in what a relatively few people
were doing to go fast in mechanical devices. Your grandmother (or great-grandmother,
depending) may have no idea who Kenny Bernstein is, but can probably remember who Roscoe
Turner and Cook Cleland were. When the Indy 500 reached icon status, it pulled
100,000-plus spectators in the 30's. These planes are why 200,000-plus showed up
during the same time frame at the National Air Races in, ahem..., Cleveland.
Blaming Technology - Samuel C. Florman - St. Martin's
Press, New York, NY - 1981
Western civilization seems to have had a long series of love-hate relationships with
technology and its crafters. The good news is that we no longer accuse them of heresy
and/or burn them at the stake (not lately, at any rate). The bad news is that we still
don't trust them because we, culturally, still don't understand them. Our current
high-visibility infatuation with the reign of the Techno-Geek (those wonderful folks who
brought you the misuse, overuse, and eventual death of the word paradigm, for
example) is not shared with all our low-visibility kin. In a series of well-reasoned
essays that address both the conflicts and their causes, Blaming Technology
examines the forces at work when technological progress and societal apprehension collide.
Unlike Ralph Nader's pivotal (and ultimately misleading) Unsafe at Any Speed,
think of this as Safe at Most Speeds if You're Not a Complete Jerk and Mostly Pay
Attention.
Things of General Interest - History, Biography, Fiction, Essays
(I know what you're thinking: "Welcome to Unca Frank's Kiddy Kulture Klub!" Give it a rest, huh? Indulge me on this. You might even find something of interest. The following is in no particular order)
American Caesar - William Manchester - Little, Brown and
Company, Boston, MA - 1978
A biography of General Douglas McArthur. While there are a large number of military
histories, biographies, and even autobiographies that are instructive and
generally meaningful, American Caesar has always been among those that were
easiest to recommend to others. Most everyone has acquired some peripheral
knowledge of McArthur as a military commander. Manchester's book,
however, offers a peek into the inner workings of the man, who, as head of the occupying
forces after WWII, personally wrote the current Japanese Constitution, essentially
creating modern Japan from the ground up, and, some contend, is his own image.
Anything by Douglas Adams
If you're already familiar with Adams from either the radio or TV versions of his
series, The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, this is preaching to the choir (if
the choir happens to favor perversely satirical and amusingly arcane Brits doing - sort of
- sci-fi and fantasy). If you're not, perhaps this note from the dust jacket of his book Mostly
Harmless will help explain him to you: "The Fifth Book in the Increasingly
Inaccurately Named Hitchhikers Trilogy." Failing that, how about The Long, Dark
Tea Time of the Soul?
Anything by Harlan Ellison
Ellison may be the closest thing to an "acquired taste" on this list.
Frequently described as either a sci-fi or sci-fi/fantasy writer, I suspect
"speculative fiction" is closer to the truth. His later works almost defy
categorization, though I'm sure the drones at your local Megabooks chain still put them in
the "Sci-Fi/ Fantasy" section by rote. It's hard to explain how a person who is
listed as as a "conceptual consultant" on the TV series Babylon 5 (some
of the best sci-fi soap opera ever done) and who earlier had creative participation in the
honkingly awful TV series The Starlost could have written something like The
Deadly Streets, 1958, or Gentleman Junkie, 1961. He may be the best pure writer
the genre (whichever one he truly fits) has ever had, and the only one to have ever
turbocharged his b.s. detector for public display. Though somewhat period pieces and
slightly dated (by reference only), his collections of TV criticisms, The Glass Teat
& The Other Glass Teat, 1970 & 1975, remain among the best and
most cogent ever done on the medium.
The Great Shark Hunt - Hunter S. Thompson - Summit Books, New
York, NY - 1979
Bill Murray didn't do him justice. Johnny Depp didn't do him justice. Heck, he
doesn't do himself justice, and he is Hunter Thompson. Thompson is
absolutely, positively not an acquired taste. I figure it's genetic: either you
get born with the gene that reads him and says "Hey, this stuff is great!",
or you get born with the one that says "This creature is the Spawn Of Satan and
deserves to be drawn and quartered at halftime during the Super Bowl!" Thompson is
sometimes capable of literary insight and ability so profound as to leave the reader
literally speechless and almost thoughtless by its sheer brilliance. Followed, almost
immediately, by the literary version of your brother-in-law Larry with his hair on fire
after two six-packs, some really bad anchovy nachos, and his stunning loss at Trivial
Pursuit for the Learning Impaired. He can be a roller coaster ride that ends with a quick
stop at a concrete wall. He... ****, as Hunter would say, take it or leave it. But look -
how bad can anybody be that was that high up on Dick Nixon's Whitehouse Enemies List?
Anything by Tom Wolfe
While once proclaimed as the prototype for the "New Journalism," Tom has
gotten the short end lately from those whose job it is to deconstruct everything once it's
a certain age (I know how he must feel, too). That doesn't mean that his stories and books
are any the less entertaining, nor that his observations are any the less accurate. Even
some of his title have endured as art objects: The Kandy Kolored Tangerine Flake
Streamlined Baby, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Radical Chic &
Mau-Mauing The Flak Catchers, and Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine.
The flash, however, obscures Wolfe's ability to relate and communicate on a wide variety
of levels. Though his authorship of The Right Stuff (1979) may mark the high
point, other titles such topics as modern architecture (From Bauhaus To Our House,
1981) and the practice and "politics" of modern art (The Painted Word,
1975) demonstrate his ability both to understand and set perspective. Added bonus: for
those to whom actually reading stuff is anathema, some of his works (e.g., Bauhaus)
are quite brief.
Anything Else by John McPhee
Perhaps my favorite non-fiction author, Mc Phee, a long-time staff writer for New
Yorker magazine (for which I, personally, have always forgiven him), has the innate
ability to make most anything interesting. I was originally drawn to his
works not so much for the range of subject matter - incredibly broad though it may
be - but for his style of writing. For more than three decades, he has produced
eminently readable books, stories, and essays that illuminate his subjects, rather than
simply describe them. From a lengthy profile on Bill Bradley's basketball career at
Princeton (A Sense of Where You Are, 1965) to the nature of wilderness
Alaska (Coming Into The Country, 1976) to rural and rustic Scotland (The
Crofter & The Laird, 1969) to the Fulton Fish Market in New York City (Giving
Good Weight, 1979), McPhee never fails to inform and enlighten. How good is he? This
good: he wrote an engrossing and entertaining 149-page book about oranges (Oranges,
1966).
The Power Broker - Robert A. Caro - Alfred A. Knopf, New York, NY
- 1974
A biography of Robert Moses of New York. While the subject may be unfamiliar to you, what
he did and initiated is not. Moses created the modern concepts of freeways,
throughways, urban renewal, self-funding independent road and bridge toll authorities,
the Niagara Power Project, as well as organizing and financing two World's
Fairs. For 44 years, he personally supervised projects totaling 27
billion dollars. A frustrated and perhaps embittered liberal, he never held an elected
office, nor a position of authority greater the Parks Commissioner of the State of New
York. Regardless, for a time he was arguably one of the most powerful men in
America, and the only person to successfully defy Franklin Roosevelt at the height of his
presidency and survive with his career intact. While massive (1162 pages,
excluding extensive notes and lengthy bibliographies), The Power Broker is the
best book I've ever read regarding how things really get accomplished in modern
American society, and what sort of person it takes to do them.
The Prince - Niccolò Machiavelli - c. 1514 - multiple publishers
Think of this as the companion piece for (and predecessor of) The Power Broker, above.
Beyond its marvelous historical value, The Prince can be read from two
unique perspectives: either as an intriguing view of the workings of the Courts of
Florentine Italy, or as a manual for manipulating, maiming, back-stabbing, and generally
sleazing your way to the top while indulging in a naked lust for power. Along
with The Art of War (Sun Tzu, c. 400 B.C.),
this piece is frequently quoted by over-reaching business types for its perspectives on
competition, combat, and desire for primacy (as if most modern business people ever
have to worry about being poisoned at their evening meal, right?). While difficult to
describe accurately as a fun read, The Prince remains a classic work
worth the effort. Know any other authors who are/were described by their contemporaries as
"Satan Himself?"
The White Lantern - Evan S. Connell - Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
New York, NY - 1980
While Connell may have also written one of the better novels in American literature, Mrs.
Bridge, 1958, this book, like its predecessor, A Long Desire, 1979, predates
and presages the basic intent of the popular TV series Connections. In a series
of moderate-length essays, Connell weaves various threads of exploration, discovery,
astronomy, enlightenment, and anthropology (not to mention a little greed, lust,
stupidity, politics and the like) into absorbing narrations regarding, basically, how some
things got to be the way they are (or at least, were, before we mucked around
with them). If nothing else, reading a few pages of one of the Connell books about
subjects you always dreaded - and felt you had no need to know - will help you understand
how many hacks and drones there really are in the school textbook business.
The Postman (And Most Anything Else) by David Brin - Bantam
Books, New York, NY - 1985
Look, I didn't tell Kevin Costner to butcher this book, The Postman,
1985, for the movie. You probably didn't, either. And David Brin sure as ****
didn't. Nonetheless, Kevin does what Kevin wants to do, and people walk away from the
movie thinking "Who wrote this ****!?" David Brin did. A warm, touching
story about the survival of hope in a post-apocalyptic America gets turned into what one
movie critic referred to as the worthy successor to Waterworld: Dirtworld.
Skip the video (since it appears that almost no one went to see the movie, anyhow) and
read the book first. Other Brin works worth reading include The Uplift War, 1987,
and a collection of short stories, Otherness, 1994.
Most Anything by Peter Straub
Sometimes referred to as the thinking man's Steven King (and occasionally a collaborator
with him), Straub has the unique ability to create works that simultaneously
involve and detach the reader. While impossible to clearly explain, I can't escape
thinking of his books as framed to put the reader in or over the ongoing scene or
description. The word cinematography comes frequently to mind. Beyond the manner
of the writing, however one chooses to approach it, lie stories that are sometimes dark,
frequently complex, and always engrossing. Much like David Brin, the movie Ghost Story
did no fair justice to Straub's book of the same title (1979). Floating Dragon,
1983, and The Talisman, 1984 (with Steven King) are both good reads, but perhaps
my favorite is Shadow Land, 1980, a story of death, spirits, magic, and the
Brothers Grimm.
The Jesus Factor - Edwin Corley - Stein & Day
Publishers, New York, NY - 1970
The Far Arena - Richard Ben Sapir - Dell Publishing Co,
Inc., New York, NY - 1979
Sometimes, a book is worth reading simply because of the very nature of its plot. These
works qualify under that categorization (although both are, fact, very readable, well-done
pieces on their own), and have always been two of my "junk food" favorites. The
Jesus Factor has as its premise the simple fact that while nuclear and thermonuclear devices
work just fine, when used as bombs, they don't - and never have (and hence the
title from the remark "Jesus! It doesn't work!). What your Literature teacher called
"willing suspension of disbelief" is called for here. Yet beyond the
decades-long international cover-up/thriller/mystery concept lie some interesting and
entertaining scenarios, all founded on reasonable historical fact. As an example: how hard
would it be to simulate the detonation of an atomic bomb over both Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, given the technology available in mid-1945? (answer: not very hard at all, it
turns out). The Far Arena chronicles the life, times, presumable death, eventual
resuscitation, and introduction to modern civilization of a Roman gladiator. And you
thought your life was complicated. Arena also presents an interesting
view of the problems and pitfalls of running Roman Circus events as a money-making (and
execution-avoiding) business.
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