Product Description

In a nation that worships the automobile for the freedom, style, and status that it confers, the Indianapolis 500, run on or near Memorial Day eighty-seven times, is an annual rite of passage celebrating Americans’ love affair with speed.

Indy recounts the drivers (677 men and 3 women) who have gone to Indianapolis in the past ninety-five years to live their dreams, staking their lives on the outcome. It highlights the faces in the crowd: hardworking Americans, tinhorn celebrities, hookers, movie stars, gate-crashers, and five American presidents. Terry Reed focuses his narrative on the track’s four quarter-mile-long turns, each the site of triumphs (including those of such multiple winners as Billy Vukovich, A. J. Foyt, and Helio Castroneves); grisly deaths (at least sixty-six, including three unrelated men of the same unusual last name who died in the same turn but in different decades); and bizarre heroics (like the sans souci French driver who downed champagne throughout the 1913 Indy 500 and still won). Reed also examines Indy’s confluence of racing and aeronautics (World War I flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker once owned the track) and the impact upon the event of such forces as segregation, gender politics, food, fads, publicity stunts, world-class partying, and tasteless pop culture.

Indy takes readers on an entertaining, full-throttle ride through the history of one of the world’s most famous races and one of America’s most hallowed rituals. It is the definitive account of the crown jewel of American motorsports.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #125414 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 258 pages

About the Author
Terry Reed has written numerous articles in automotive publications, including Stock Car Racing, Vintage Auto Racing, On Track, and Indy Car Racing, with best-of-year winners in the American Auto Racing Writers and Broadcasters Association-refereed competition. He has also published books on Truman Capote and playwright and New Yorker essayist S. N. Behrman. He holds a doctorate in Anglo-American literature and lives near Cincinnati, Ohio.

Customer Reviews

Twenty-five more years of detail, racing events, and track insights
If Indy: The Race And Ritual Of The Indianapolis 500 sounds familiar, that's because this is the second updated edition of the most famous motorsport event of all time, adding twenty-five more years of detail, racing events, and track insights in an extensive updated revision. Others books have of course been written about the sport - many weightier tomes - but none with the lore, depth and detail of INDY: The Race And Ritual Of The Indianapolis 500.

Book missing key item--but a fun read for racing fan
The book misses one of the all-time worst incidents on Turn 4---the 1964 tragic accident involving Eddie Sachs and Dave MacDonald. Reed has done wonderful research....not a very good grammatical writer but well worth buying if you like the history of the Indy 500

A decent book
This book is okay. It wasn't what I thought it would be when I bought it. It focuses on the crashes on each part of the track, with the ritual of the Indy 500 talked about in a few pages. It did give a few tidbits of info on the race which I had never heard about.