Faster by Neal Bascomb

This book is fantastic, and it’s really just a straight up story from start to finish. No real notes here to share, and not a ton of factual history or historical breakdown in Bascomb’s tale as he really does just enough to set the scene, time, and place as the book moves from year-to-year — but that doesn’t detract from the story at all. I’m not quite sure how he pulls this off, but he made me think that he was actually there in France and Germany and Italy in the 1920’s and 1930’s, the way he is able to cobble together first-hand accounts of how “a Jewish Driver, an American Heiress, and a Legendary Car Beat Hitler’s Best”. I’m not really sure why I’ve read so much about Nazi Germany in the past few months, but in that time I’ve certainly learned a great deal about two of Hitler’s many obsessions: beating cancer, and being THE dominant player on the Grand Prix car racing scene, which really started to explode prior to World War II. Bascomb’s ability to tell this almost too-good-to-be-true tale lies in the character details of the race car drivers: their passions, their love life’s, their obsession with winning, their ability to defy death seemingly at every turn, until, of course, their respective quests for speed and winning became too great for some of them to overcome. I think that the most interesting part of this book is how the main characters were able to pursue their passions and careers knowing that the world around them was coming apart, and how, ultimately, when the world did fall apart, they made the best of the rest of their lives, even if it didn’t involve racing in any way. Faster moves quickly, is a very breezy read, and is highly recommended if you are interested in the origins of Grand Prix racing, or you just want to read a fast-moving, pulsating tale that is immensely satisfying from start to finish.