Tuesday, February 12, 2008

A few weeks ago, I was honored to receive an e-mail from a marketing company asking me to review a book for one of their clients. As most of you know a) I love books and b) I love racing. And they wanted me to review a book about racing. Obviously I jumped at the opportunity.

What I didn't expect, however, was to love the book as much as I did. One Helluva Ride, by Washington Post reporter Liz Clarke, reminded me how much I love racing, and to be honest, reminded how much, at one time in my life, I really wanted a job like Liz's. Her inside look at some of the biggest days in the sport, including being present when Dale Sr. won the 1998 Daytona 500, to the day he died in that same race three years later, was enlightening and for the latter story, tough to read.

This book helped me understand what goes on in the background, in the media room, where the cameras are pointed at the drivers, not at the people who put the news out.

Liz covers everything, from NASCAR's beginning with moonshine and dirt, to the NASCAR we know today with cameras, media circuses and gasp, no more Miss Winston. She talks about the tragedy that really is the Allison family, to some lesser known details (to me at least) like how the France family faced the threat of a drivers union, you know that whole "don't bother getting back in a race car" thing) to the story of one of my personal favorites, Tim Richmond. (I could, and might, write a whole blog about him someday).

All of you racing junkie's out there will love this book. I read it in one sitting, even while putting it down a telling anyone in the room with me, "Hey, I forgot all about this, listen..."

I'm hoping to get a small interview with Liz in the next few weeks, she's understandably busy, but I'll let you know all know. Until then, go pick up One Helluva Ride, on bookshelves today.

http://chicksview.blogspot.com/

By Diecast Dude

Posted on Wed Feb 06, 2008 at 12:22:44 PM EST

The best writers create from head and heart.  They not only know the subject being discussed, but have genuine feelings about and for the topic at hand.  They put into practice proper writing skills, communicating information with clear efficiency.  Such writers are scarce commodities, so when one is discovered it's worth noting.  And when they're writing about something you're interested in, so much the better.

One Helluva Ride, the new book on NASCAR by veteran reporter Liz Clarke, doesn't merely meet the aforementioned criteria.  It exceeds them.  It is, without exaggeration, easily the best book I have ever read on NASCAR.  In fact, it's one of the best sports books I have ever read period.  And I've read a slew of them.  This book really is that good.

Clarke, who has covered NASCAR for different newspapers since the very early 1990s, has given us an overview of the sport's history both then and now that is all at once completely accurate, informative, easy to approach, and completely enveloping as it weaves first-hand stories from the people who made the history into the history.  Her writing style is clean and never dumbed down; easy to understand while being refreshingly intelligent.

Clarke personalizes the story not via manipulations but rather by unobtrusively allowing those involved to speak for themselves.  When she does incorporate herself into a particular person or event's narrative, it's because she was there and her experiences as a reporter not lacking in genuine affection for not only the people in the sport, but the sport itself dovetail perfectly into the time and place being covered.

If you are a longtime fan, this book is a comfortable and sometimes poignant look at NASCAR from its beginnings through today.  For more recent members of the NASCAR Nation, it is an invaluable history lesson plus reinforcement of the reasons why NASCAR fans are the most passionate fans in all of sports.  Whoever you are, give yourself a treat when the book is released next Tuesday (February 12th) by picking up a copy.  You won't be able to put it down once you do.  It's far too easy to say One Helluva Ride is one helluva book.  But it is.  It really is.

'One Helluva Ride' is one helluva read

By RICHARD HUFF
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Wednesday, February 13th 2008, 5:12 PM

Since the start of NASCAR, folks have been trying to explain the point of racing.

Add Washington Post writer Liz Clarke to that list.

In her new book "One Helluva Ride: How NASCAR Swept The Nation" out this week (Villard, $25) she sums it up this way:

"So the point of racing, it seemed, wasn't the destination. It was the ride itself. It was the sheer exhilaration of hurtling into a corner with total commitment," she wrote, recalling a ride she took with Mark Martin at one point earlier in her career. "Racing was the ultimate leap of faith, trusting the machine beneath you and every instinct inside you, even when you didn't know what was around the next turn."

Clarke is dead on with the description.

"One Helluva Ride" is part history, part memoir, with Clarke, a talented writer, mixing what was going on at the track with her personal observations, and feelings.

Like many, she's emotional when it comes to the day Dale Earnhardt died in 2001 and the aftermath.

"They say Earnhardt's death made NASCAR better because it made racing safer," she wrote. "It did indeed. But for me, it left a sadness I could never explain. For months, I felt numb to everything around me. And inside, there was an emptiness as black as the car he drove."

Clarke's thoughts will strike a chord with the legion of Earnhardt fans still sporting No. 3 decals on their cars.

February 17, 2008

A heartfelt, introspective 'Ride' around ever-changing sport

By MARK DAVIS

Books Editor

Feb. 18, 2001, is a date that will never be forgotten by NASCAR nation.

It was the day that legendary driver Dale Earnhardt Sr. died in a crash on the last turn of the last lap of the Daytona 500. He had won the race for the first time only three years earlier, after numerous failures.

Liz Clarke remembers the raw emotions and shock behind Earnhardt's sudden departure. As a reporter for The Washington Post, she described firsthand the tumultuous scene around Daytona International Speedway. And it wasn't something she easily put behind her after writing her stories, leaving the track and heading to a local bar with a co-worker.

"It was filled with numb, dazed people -- big, burly men in studded leather vests, their eyes red and swollen; barmaids with no heart for smiles or tips; people too afraid to be alone, too torn up to speak. It was filled with people just like us -- sitting quietly, shaking their head," writes Clarke. "The sport was changing long before Dale Earnhardt was killed. But when he died, a lot of things died with him. He was stock car racing's anchor to the past."

It's poignant moments like these that make Clarke's book, "One Helluva Ride: How NASCAR Swept the Nation," something to treasure for the rest of the 2008 Sprint Cup season and beyond.

Clarke is an award-winning journalist who has covered the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing since the early 1990s. As one of the few female veteran NASCAR reporters, she offers a fresh perspective into the rough-and-tumble sport dominated by males.

The publishing industry is oversaturated with NASCAR-related books and magazines. But "One Helluva Ride" stands out for its relative elegance and simplicity, in spite of its boisterous title. She takes her time telling stories. Imagine taking a leisurely ride with a veteran driver around the Speedway in a golf cart while he talks about the old days and how times have changed. It's relaxing and entertaining.

Change is the central theme to "One Helluva Ride." Clarke describes some pivotal moments in modern NASCAR history (i.e. the 1979 Daytona 500, the 1992 all-star race in Charlotte) and blends them with drivers' stories and personal anecdotes into a strong narrative. The journey isn't entirely smooth (a few of the stories we've heard before), but Clarke comes pretty close to running a problem-free race.

Thankfully, she doesn't get carried away with auto-racing history and shies away from raving and ranting about what's right and wrong about NASCAR. But she does explain some trends and offers some astute analysis. She says the organization is at a crossroads and faces some serious challenges in its march toward mass appeal.

The best parts of her book are her exclusive interviews with seven-time champion and all-around class-act Richard Petty, legendary driver/owner Junior Johnson and Earnhardt, who revealed a big heart behind his "The Intimidator" nickname. Clarke got to know Earnhardt pretty well, and she writes about her experiences with him in a chapter appropriately titled "Dale Earnhardt: Working-Class Hero."

Clarke's questions drew some riveting answers from the Kannapolis, N.C., native, and he had some tough yet cryptic words for her when the subject of retirement came up a few years before he died.

"I'm still a factor and a contender and by no means ready to throw in the towel and give up and hand over the flag," Earnhardt told Clarke. "Son-of-a-bitch is gonna have to take it from me."

Posted on Sun, Mar. 16, 2008

NASCAR: Not just a bunch of fast left turns

PAM KELLEY

"Who would want to write about NASCAR?" my teenage daughter asked when she noticed Liz Clarke's new book, "One Helluva Ride: How NASCAR Swept the Nation" (Villard Books, $25) on my nightstand.

That same question, I admit, had occurred to me. But in this book, Clarke, a Washington Post sportswriter, offers an eloquent answer. "One Helluva Ride," at turns funny, heartbreaking and insightful, gives readers a history of NASCAR that both hard-core fans and racing curmudgeons will enjoy.

Clarke, who began writing about racing at the Observer in the '90s, sets out to help nonfans understand why people care deeply about a sport that's sometimes dismissed as a series of left turns.

She also wanted to record "almost in a memoir fashion" what she witnessed as NASCAR transformed itself from a Southern phenomenon to a national pastime.

Clarke knew nearly zilch about NASCAR when she got her first assignment. She writes in her introduction: "So I headed to Charlotte Motor Speedway steeled against the prospect of introducing myself to wild, crude, belching men whose only means of making a living, since they clearly lacked basic common sense and a job skill, was going around in circles at 200 miles an hour."

She soon realized that it wasn't about the cars as much as the personalities.

And over time, she grew to know the top drivers up close -- riding with Dale Earnhardt in his truck, watching Richard Petty sign thousands of autographs during a fan open house at the family's racing compound, listening to Junior Johnson describe the day in 1964 when writer Tom Wolfe came calling.

"He weren't a pushy person," Johnson told her. "He was very well dressed, and he stayed that way. That day and every day I seen him thereafter he had on that sorta brown, green suit. All he'd do is keep wiping the sweat off him."

If you never understood the Earnhardt mystique, listen to Clarke: "... Earnhardt would come to represent the people. The hardest working people. With every pass for position, Earnhardt fulfilled the fantasy of every wage earner who dreamed of telling his boss where he could shove it."

You can't understand why Earnhardt's death affected so many people, Clark told me, without knowing what he stood for. "He truly was them escaping their own lives. He got out of the cotton mill."

Clarke often gets asked how she's treated as a woman covering NASCAR. She says she's found the sport more welcoming and accepting than other major sports. In fact, the N.C. legislators she covered as a young reporter in Raleigh made her feel patronized and uncomfortable like she never did at the track.

NASCAR has evolved since Clarke began writing about it. It's slicker, more corporate. (Case in point: Dale Earnhardt Jr. was fined $10,000 in 2004 for saying the s-word in a gleeful moment.)

"I don't feel it's as rippling with colorful personalities," Clarke says. Like the Home Depot that replaced your local hardware store, it offers more, but it's just not the same.

Still, Clarke says, "when you consider this was a family business that started in the dirt 60 years ago, this is a breathtaking, stunning, truly American success story."

NASCAR portraits

Add "Portraits of NASCAR" (Triumph Books, $27.95) to the growing genre of NASCAR books.

This collection of photo portraits of NASCAR families is the work of Kannapolis photographer Anita Rich and co-author Robin Dallenbach.

Photos include Richard Childress at his vineyard, Dale Earnhardt Jr. shooting pool and NASCAR Chairman Bill France Jr. with his wife, Betty Jane, taken in their home a few months before his 2007 death. The book is licensed by NASCAR.

By Andrew Giangola, Special to NASCAR.COM

March 21, 2008

Journalist Liz Clarke admits that back in 1991, she was as unlikely as anyone to cover or care about NASCAR. She had gone to Barnard College. She showed up at the track in a dress. About all she knew of racing was Bruce Springsteen once mentioned Junior Johnson in a song.

Fellow journalists would "laugh or snort as if I'd just delivered a punch line when I'd tell them I was covering NASCAR, and then stare with a look of pity or disdain, as if I'd been exiled to sports writing's most demeaning job," Clarke recounts in her entertaining new book, One Helluva Ride: How NASCAR Swept the Nation.

This is the story of "a once humble sport's remarkable coming of age." It's also the tale of a young sports writer's own journey to discover a sport she now cares about deeply.

Pondering 17 years covering NASCAR, Clarke writes, "I discovered an affinity for the sport, developed an affection for its personalities, grieved over the death of a half-dozen drivers, came to resent the rationalization that invariably followed, and more recently, settled on an arm's-length admiration for the business success it has achieved."

Early on, the young reporter quickly discovered that while the spectacle of NASCAR ("part circus, party county fair") is fascinating grist, the sport's allure and richness is found in the lives of the drivers, those often quirky personalities who are "earnest, driven, self-made and lacking the arrogance and entitlement that afflicted so many professional athletes."

Broad-brush NASCAR histories like Neal Thompson's Driving with the Devil, Peter Golenbrock's NASCAR Confidential and Joe Menzer's The Wildest Ride have all told the story of NASCAR's rise through the colorful personalities fans have fallen in love with.

Clarke adheres to the bromide "write what you know best." She dwells on the past two decades, sticking to modern-day personalities she's had the benefit of covering -- and getting to know personally -- as a sportswriter for USA Today, The Charlotte Observer, The Dallas Morning News and currently The Washington Post.

As a reporter, Clarke spent ample time with stalwarts Junior Johnson, Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon. In fact, she sketches the "passing of the torch" transitions of each era-defining star to the next as the framework for modern day NASCAR.

The author is at her best when describing the key players. Big Bill France "ruled his kingdom with the authority of a Mafia don and the imagination of Walt Disney." Dale Earnhardt was "a modern-day Samson in his open-faced helmet," who "fulfilled the fantasy of every wage earner who dreamed of telling his boss where he could shove it." For Tim Richmond, "every day was Christmas ... and every night was Saturday night."

Richard Petty is "equal parts Andy Griffith and Elvis Presley, instinctively modulating between the two depending on the circumstance. He was the folksy, friendly paternal Griffith when dealing with fans. But the moment he climbed in his racecar, he was Elvis."

Like the best drivers she covers, Clarke is in control and at the top of her game, particularly when musing about Miss Winston, who is gone today, but ever-present in Helluva Ride from the opening paragraph. There's Miss Winston, sobbing in Victory Lane when a sick Tim Richmond wins at Pocono. There she is again, next to Ryan Newman, "when the spray of champagne matted her pony tail and drenched her red racing suit."

As the years pass, Miss Winston changes costumes from hot pants to bell bottoms to form-fitting jumpsuits. She's "a special kind of girl," spunky yet poised, liberally sprinkling boundless goodwill each race weekend. As Clarke writes, "Some men were so awed that they couldn't look at Miss Winston directly as she picked up her black Sharpie pen and poured her syrupy southern voice all over them."

If One Helluva Ride begs for a sequel, it's Liz Clarke formerly of the Ivy League, now loose as Tim Richmond over the bump at Pocono, mashing the gas and flexing her ample writing chops for a full 200-plus page riff on the life and times of Miss Winston. Smokin'!

by Bill Littlefield, host of NPR’s Only a Game (WBUR-Boston)

Did you ever wonder why auto racing is so massively popular?  Liz Clarke’s new book One Helluva Ride examines where the sport came from, and how fans of NASCAR have become so passionately devoted.  Bill Littlefield reviews the book, and finds that there’s more than meets the eye in the land of left turns.

This is a book for people who love watching auto races, certainly. It is full of stories of their heroes.

But it is also a book for people who are mystified by the popularity of the sport. Liz Clarke tells NASCAR stories with energy and enthusiasm. She writes as if there’s nowhere she’d rather be than the track, and as if nobody could have better friends than the men about whom she writes. In short, she makes a case for the charms of a sport which might look like it’s just a lot of guys going fast and turning left in brightly painted cars.

She has lots of material with which to work. NASCAR’s history can certainly be described as colorful. The first drivers supported themselves by running moonshine in the same cars they were racing. When Bill France “organized” their activity into a spectacle that would hugely benefit him, the drivers shrugged off the fact that France would have everything to gain and nothing to lose, while they would have everything to lose and precious little to gain.

One of defining features of NASCAR is the passion the sport has inspired in its fans. In some cases, “worship” is more like it. People who root for particular drivers don’t just wear caps and t-shirts with that driver’s number on them; they have the driver’s image tattooed across their backs. And, by golly, they regard the sport as theirs, and theirs alone. When the Charlotte Observer conducted an on-line survey to see what NASCAR fans thought about the sport’s attempt to attract foreign drivers and a more diverse fan base, fifty four percent of the respondents checked the box marked “It’s wrong, and it troubles me,” while only seventeen percent marked “It’s great. Fresh talent might make for better racing.”

Liz Clarke is a big fan of auto racing, but even she acknowledges that globalization won’t come easy to a sport built on that sort of bed rock.

“From the moonshiners of the Southern mountains to Madison Avenue, Liz Clarke takes us into the very soul of NASCAR. Her insightful mind and years of covering stock car racing make this book an absolute read for anyone even faintly curious about this phenomenon.”

—H. A. “Humpy” Wheeler, veteran NASCAR promoter and president of Lowe’s Motor Speedway