I grew up watching Formula 1 as a fan, and have been lucky enough to turn my passion into my career as a journalist. I’ve covered F1 races since the early 1990’s, travelling around the world and getting to know many of its biggest stars. One of my proudest moments was winning a prestigious Medaglia d’Oro at the Lorenzo Bandini Awards for my contribution to motorsport journalism. Even though F1 has changed over the years – especially becoming a lot more commercial – I think the fundamentals remain: it's of the very best drivers in the very best cars going at it wheel-to-wheel in that all out quest for victory. That’s why I love it.
Formula 1 is a fast-changing and complicated sport, which can make it quite hard to follow at times – whether you are a newcomer or someone who has followed it for years. F1 Racing for Dummies helps to break down its complexity and explains all the different elements that make grand prix racing what it is today.
Whether it is digging into the rules, strategies, tracks, drivers from the past, and the potential stars of the future, it offers a detailed and fun look at F1 to help anyone who watches the sport on TV or in the grandstands get more out of it.
Adrian Newey is perhaps Formula 1’s most famous car designer, and certainly its most successful in the modern era.
For those that love tech, his autobiography charts all his title successes with top teams like Williams, McLaren, and Red Bull. But I especially like this book for the way that it shed light on his personality and some crazy antics.
One of my favourite stories was of him getting expelled from public school after turning up the music at a concert so loud that it cracked some prized 11th-century stained-glass windows!
'Adrian has a unique gift for understanding drivers and racing cars. He is ultra competitive but never forgets to have fun. An immensely likeable man.' Damon Hill
The world's foremost designer in Formula One, Adrian Newey OBE is arguably one of Britain's greatest engineers and this is his fascinating, powerful memoir.
How to Build a Car explores the story of Adrian's unrivalled 35-year career in Formula One through the prism of the cars he has designed, the drivers he has worked alongside and the races in which he's been involved.
A true engineering genius, even in adolescence Adrian's thoughts naturally…
Despite his death at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix, Ayrton Senna’s legend still lives on strong in Formula 1. There have been many books written about him, but the one I have enjoyed the most for the way it both explored the man and career, and the impact of his tragic passing, is this one.
Richard Williams is a fantastic writer and he captures brilliantly just why Senna had this aura – which seems to get bigger with every passing year.
The most definitive and compelling book about the legendary racing driver, now a BAFTA award-winning documentary.
'For the casual racing fan it's a mighty good read, for the Senna fan it's indispensable' Time Out
Millions of people around the world watched in horror on that fateful day in Imola at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix when Ayrton Senna's car careered off the track at 190mph. The greatest driver in Formula One history was dead.
In this classic sports book, Richard Williams explores the complex Brazilian who was a hero in his own country and an icon to everyone who…
The late Gilles Villeneuve may not have been Formula 1’s most successful driver, indeed he never won a world championship, but that did not stop him earning legendary status for his antics being the wheel.
Labelled ‘the craziest devil’ by some of his rivals, Villeneuve was a driver who fans loved because he was always pushing to the maximum and could only operate at the limit – which made him spectacular. I only got to hear about Villeneuve after he died, but I found there was no better book to shed light on what he was like as a driver and as man than Donaldson’s brilliant biography.
Gilles Villeneuve became a legend in his own time, a driver whose skill and daring personified the ideals of Grand Prix racing, the pinnacle of motor sport. With his flamboyantly aggressive, press-on-regardless style in his scarlet Ferrari, he captured the imagination of a vast international audience as no other driver has in recent times.
The status of Formula 1 legends is not just reserved for drivers, because there have been other big personalities involved in grand prix racing who became household names too.
One of those was commentator Murray Walker, who became the voice of F1 on both television and radio. I grew up listening to Walker on the BBC, so it was little wonder that this mini-autobiography Bedside Wheels became such a big hit for me.
In it he recounted some of his funniest moments covering the sport, as well as offers insight into just why he became famous for his commentary gaffes – which he insists throughout are not gaffes, but predictions that are immediately proved wrong!
Formula 1 may now be a multi-billion dollar industry that is watched by millions around the world every other weekend, but it was not always like that.
The origins of the sport go back to the start of the 20th century, and I’ve always put history book Power and Glory (which comes in two volumes) as perhaps the best exploration of those early years.
Through his detailed research, and the use of impressive archive photos, William Court’s hefty volumes offer some great insight into the legends of the past where grand prix motor racing was almost unrecognisable from how it is today.
I am adopted. For most of my life, I didn’t identify as adopted. I shoved that away because of the shame I felt about being adopted and not truly fitting into my family. But then two things happened: I had my own biological children, the only two people I know to date to whom I am biologically related, and then shortly after my second daughter was born, my older sister, also an adoptee, died of a drug overdose. These sequential births and death put my life on a new trajectory, and I started writing, out of grief, the history of adoption and motherhood in America.
I grew up thinking that being adopted didn’t matter. I was wrong. This book is my journey uncovering the significance and true history of adoption practices in America. Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women’s reproductive rights places an even greater emphasis on adoption. As a mother, historian, and adoptee, I am uniquely qualified to uncover the policies and practices of adoption.
The history of adoption, reframed through the voices of adoptees like me, and mothers who have been forced to relinquish their babies, blows apart old narratives about adoption, exposing the fallacy that adoption is always good.
In this story, I reckon with the pain and unanswered questions of my own experience and explore broader issues surrounding adoption in the United States, including changing legal policies, sterilization, and compulsory relinquishment programs, forced assimilation of babies of color and Indigenous babies adopted into white families, and other liabilities affecting women, mothers, and children. Now is the moment we must all hear these stories.
Who Is a Worthy Mother?: An Intimate History of Adoption
Nearly every person in the United States is affected by adoption. Adoption practices are woven into the fabric of American society and reflect how our nation values human beings, particularly mothers. In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women's reproductive rights places an even greater emphasis on adoption. As a mother, historian, and adoptee, Rebecca C. Wellington is uniquely qualified to uncover the policies and practices of adoption. Wellington's timely-and deeply researched-account amplifies previously marginalized voices and exposes the social and racial biases embedded in the United States' adoption industry.…
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