Grand National: America's Golden Age of Motorcycle Racing

At best this book is loosely organized, with racers coming into and out and into the text again without a whole lot of respect for chronological order. It's also written in a breezy, slightly stream-of-conscious way that seems to be a deliberate attempt to avoid a pedantic history of the Grand National races. It's a little off-putting at first, but give it a chance. Part of the time dislocation problem in the book is because of the nature of the Grand Nationals: there were five separate types of racing (albeit mostly dirt track-types) with overlapping racers and accounts. By the time I finished the book I was absorbed by Scalzo's accounts of the fights--oral, fist, track, and political--that tuners, riders, factories, and sponsors carried on in these races. And how about the plain gutsy riding of these masters of the craft? These racers were a wild combination of courage, skill, persistence, and exceedingly high pain tolerance, all for a sport that's never been popular in the U.S. and that for the most part paid poorly in the Golden Era. Memorable is Gary Nixon's wrestling with his bike at 180 mph at Daytona in a strong wind, working loose the screws in his forearm's metal plate. Or Dick Mann's crash and horrifying "hospital" stay at some fly-blown midwestern dirt track. The names that are resurrected in this book bring back memories to me. A teen in the early 70s and interested in motorcycles even before, it was great fun for me to read of these racers once again. The book also brings out the melancholy side to motorcycle racing; the riders who died or who were badly injured and left out to twist in the wind. I still remember Cal Rayborn's death. The Grand Nationals: they asked so much of the racers, and gave so little. And yet Mulder and Markel and Resweber raced. Clearly fame and material goodies were not the main reasons they raced. Interestingly, the last picture in the book is a color photo of the abandoned and closed Ascot Park, home of steeplechase and Number 1 plate legends. How could such a track go to waste, and later be paved over for some miserable commercial park? Scalzo's book brings back much of the bittersweet history and memory of the golden days of American motorcycle racing, "the days that are no more." Warts and all, this book is a worthy read and chockablock with great pictures, even those pictures not strictly of the era.

Delivery was timely as promised. The item was the exact quality promised. I would not hesitate to purchase from this seller again.

A must have for any fan of flattrack racing. Another example of the excellent writing of Joe Scalzo.