Full Throttle: The Life and Fast Times of NASCAR Legend Curtis Turner - Hardcover

Robert-edelstein

 
9781585674381: Full Throttle: The Life and Fast Times of NASCAR Legend Curtis Turner
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1585674389 ISBN 13: 9781585674381
Verlag: Overlook Books, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

Curtis Turner's life embodied everything that makes NASCAR the biggest spectator sport in American history. In gripping prose, and with full access to the files of Turner's widow, biographer Robert Edelstein thrillingly recreates the life of this American legend. Full Throttle is the first-ever full-scale chronicle of Turner's legendary life, from his days as a teenage moonshine runner, through his incredible comeback after four years of being banned from the NASCAR circuit. Motor racing and mayhem, the non-stop pursuit of outrageous dreams, high-speed thrills, and a really good time...these are the raw materials of Full Throttle: The Life and Fast Times of Curtis Turner. This one's on the fast track.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Robert Edelstein is the exclusive motor sports writer for TV Guide, where his stories are read by more NASCAR fans than any other writer in the country. He is also a contributor to Stuff, Blender, and A&E Biography, among other publications.

Rezensionen

In the NASCAR beginning, there was Curtis Turner, the "Babe Ruth of Stock Car Racing," who won more than 350 stock-car races, including 25 NASCAR events in 1956 alone, and was the first professional driver ever featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated, in 1968. In his spare time, he threw the best and longest parties on the circuit and, by the way, earned millions dealing in timber, selling acreage the equivalent of six percent of the state of North Carolina. Edelstein offers a well-researched, thoroughly enjoyable account of the life of this NASCAR pioneer and iconoclast, starting with Turner's boyhood as a moonshine runner for his father (where Curtis learned his uncanny driving skills escaping the law), followed by his development as a timber entrepreneur (he started with a $32,500 investment in a Virginia mountain that he quickly turned around for $85,000), and covering the history of Turner's rough-and-tumble racing career, which ended with Turner's untimely death in 1970 in a plane accident. An excellent volume for libraries whose patrons have even only a passing interest in NASCAR. Alan Moores
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Curtis Turner dominated the sport of stock car racing and thrilled fans with his daredevil driving in the 1940s, '50s and '60s, long before NASCAR became an official racing organization. Motor sports writer Edelstein breathlessly recounts Turner's career as well as his significant contributions to the sport. Turner (1924–1970) started driving his father's car at age nine; by the time he was a teenager, he was running moonshine in the Virginia hills, becoming famous for his ability to outrun cops. During those years, Turner perfected a move immortalized by Burt Reynolds in his Smokey and the Bandit movies: he'd slam on the brakes, spin a complete 180 to face his pursuers and escape. Turner moved on to racing at dirt tracks throughout the South, driving with the reckless abandon he'd learned as a teenage 'shine runner. His personal life moved quickly, too: he became a millionaire many times, but spent the money as quickly as he earned it, often on failed business ventures, women and parties. Edelstein is impressed by Turner's accomplishments (and rightly so); he effusively chronicles one after another (e.g., Turner's status as the first race car driver pictured on Sports Illustrated's cover; his building of the Charlotte Motor Speedway) and draws on concrete sourcing—based on Turner's personal files—to give the book depth and perspective. Photos. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Verlag
Overlook Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2005
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1585674389
ISBN 13 
9781585674381
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
326
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Verantwortliche Person
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