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[h=2]Robin Miller's holiday gift guide[/h] Monday, 05 December 2016


Robin Miller
Some laughs, some nostalgia, some great moments and loads of cool photos – that's the holiday offering for race fans wanting to read and learn this month.
Pete Biro's masterful montage of the Can-Am series ("Can-Am 50th Anniversary: Flat Out with North America's Greatest Race Series 1966-74", available on Amazon.com) captures the personality and power of America's greatest sports car series, which ran from 1966-74. A gung-ho photojournalist for six decades who also covered IndyCars and Formula 1, Biro owns some of the most candid and colorful shots of Revson, Donohue, Gurney, Follmer, McLaren and Hulme as they chased other across North America in cars with horsepower we'll likely never see again.
This past summer, Chip Ganassi tried Le Mans for the first time with Ford's backing – scoring an impressive victory – and David Phillips was there to document it. "A Big Ask: The Story of Ford's Triumphant Return to Le Mans" (available directly through the publisher by clicking here or on Amazon) is a behind-the-scenes looks at how this program came together. Longtime motorsports writer Phillips chronicles the start to the glorious celebration. For an excerpt, click here.
Kevin Olson, a two-time USAC midget champion and full-time comedian, has combined those two traits into an enjoyable read called "Cages Are for Monkeys" (Coastal181.com). KO's journeys with pals Stan Fox and Sleepy Tripp from Terre Haute to Ascot Park to New Zealand is a good look at how much fun it was to race midgets in the 1970s and 1980s.
Former RACER editor David Malsher gives us a good look at how Will Power went from the dirt of Toowoomba to the IndyCar championship with Roger Penske in "The Sheer Force of Will Power" (available at Amazon.com and Target.com).
Andy Hallbery and Jeff Olson, two writing lifers whose work has graced the pages of RACER and USA TODAY, wanted to tell Dan Wheldon's story in a different way so they recruited his former teammates, rivals and family to put his career in their words (Lionheart at Amazon.com and Coastal181.com).
The Bettenhausen family is one of the most successful in motorsports history and Gordon Kirby and Joe Freeman continued their excellent collaboration with "Tony Bettenhausen and Sons: An American Racing Family Album" (available at Racemaker.com and Amazon.com). Kirby, one of the most prolific and passionate racing writers of the past 45 years, decided to use the words of the only surviving brother, Merle, and sister Susie to describe the 217 pages of wonderful photos of the careers of Tony Sr., Gary and Tony Jr.
Besides being a great guy, Art Pollard was a late bloomer but a quick learner, and his rise from jalopies in Oregon to the Indy 500 is documented in Bob Kehoe's tribute "Art Pollard, The Life and Legacy of a Gentleman Racer" (Amazon.com).
Terry Reed's original release of "Indy: Race & Ritual" was in 1980 but it's been updated and available at Amazon.com and is a very entertaining and enlightening look at the Indianapolis 500.