Blood and Smoke A True Tale of Mystery, Mayhem and the Birth of the Indy 500

"History comes alive" ( Kirkus Reviews) in the wild and true story of the first Indy 500 and the dawn of the automotive agenow in paperback. The inaugural Indy 500 occurred in 1911. Witnessed by 80,000 spectators, the race featured forty cars, all open-cockpit, windshield-less vehicles racing at the then-astonishing speed of seventy-five miles per hour for a prize of $27,000 in gold money. With no helmets, roll-bars, or seat belts to protect them, drivers' lives were at risk; indeed one racer was killed that day, and five others hospitalized. Race officials had to run for safety as the speeding cars careened on oil-slicked bricks. Even the race's outcome was in disputeand remains so to this day. Attended by 400,000 spectators and broadcast nationally, the Indy 500 is still the event on the auto racing calendar, a spectacle that transcends sports. Fans will thrill to the story of Blood and Smoke, in which mayhem, skullduggery, and fate conspired to create a rivalry among drivers that still exists today.

Charles Leerhsen has been an editor at Sports Illustrated, People, and Us Weekly, and was a senior writer at Newsweek. He has written for Esquire, Rolling Stone, The New York limes Magazine, Money, and Smithsonian, among other publications, and is the author of Crazy Good: The True Story of Dan Patch, The Most Famous Horse in America. He and his wife, the writer Sarah Saffian, live in Brooklyn, New York.