''The World's Number One, Flat-Out, All-Time Great Stock Car Racing Book'' is a non-fiction book on early stock car racing published in 1975 by
Doubleday.
The book revolves around the 1972
Southern 500
The Southern 500, officially known as the Cook Out Southern 500 for sponsorship reasons, is a NASCAR Cup Series stock car race at Darlington Raceway in Darlington, South Carolina, United States. The race distance is and consists of 367 laps. Fro ...
weekend at
Darlington Raceway
Darlington Raceway is a race track built for NASCAR racing located in Darlington, South Carolina. It is nicknamed "The Lady in Black" and "The Track Too Tough to Tame" by many NASCAR fans and drivers and advertised as "A NASCAR Tradition." It is ...
in
Darlington, SC, with historical pieces and driver interviews in between.
In the 20th Anniversary Edition introduction, Bledsoe notes that the first edition barely sold enough to cover the publishing and marketing costs. "Well, it was well received by critics," Bledsoe states, "several of whom said it lived up to its title. A couple called it a classic work on the subject, and to be a classic, it has to stay around, right?" Bledsoe put out the anniversary edition in 1995, published by Down Home Press.
The book features drivers
Ethel Flock,
Tim Flock
Julius Timothy Flock (May 11, 1924 – March 31, 1998) was an American stock car racer. He was a two-time NASCAR series champion. He was a brother to NASCAR's second female driver Ethel Mobley and Bob and Fonty Flock.
NASCAR career
Tim Flo ...
,
Friday Hassler
Raymond "Friday" Hassler (July 29, 1935 – February 17, 1972) was a NASCAR Grand National and Winston Cup Series driver.
Career
Hassler made his debut in 1960 but only drove a handful of races per year until 1967 when he drove 21 of the 49 race ...
,
Junior Johnson
Robert Glenn Johnson Jr. (June 28, 1931 – December 20, 2019), better known as Junior Johnson, was an American NASCAR driver of the 1950s and 1960s. He won 50 NASCAR races in his career before retiring in 1966. In the 1970s and 1980s, he became ...
,
David Pearson,
Richard Petty
Richard Lee Petty (born July 2, 1937), nicknamed "The King", is an American former stock car racing driver who raced from 1958 to 1992 in the former NASCAR Grand National and Winston Cup Series (now called the NASCAR Cup Series), most notabl ...
,
Billy Scott,
Wendell Scott
Wendell Oliver Scott (August 29, 1921 – December 23, 1990) was an American stock car racing driver. He was one of the first African-American drivers in NASCAR and the first African-American to win a race in the Grand National Series, NASCAR's h ...
and
Larry Smith, as well as Bill Frazier, Richard Howard and
Ken Squier
Kenley Dean Squier (born April 10, 1935) is an American sportscaster and motorsports editor from Waterbury, Vermont. From 1979 to 1997, he served as the lap-by-lap commentator for ''NASCAR on CBS'', and was also a lap-by-lap commentator for T ...
.
Reception
The Central New Jersey Home News(New Brunswick, NJ), Feb 18, 1975: "Jerry Bledsoe has tried to capture some of the fascination of NASCAR racing in his book... There is a lot of Wolfe's 'new journalism' style in this book, but not enough to erase Bledsoe's obvious talents for seeing inside the people he is writing about and transferring their words to print."
The High Point Enterprise(High Point, NC), Feb 23, 1975: "Bledsoe has written about stock car racing from its beginning to where it is today. He tells this story not in a single, chronological narrative, but through glimpses of people involved in stock car racing."
St. Louis Post Dispatch(St. Louis, MO), March 16, 1975: "Bledsoe sees a unique slice of American culture amid the STP decals and oversize Goodyear racing tires."
Tallahassee Democrat(Tallahassee, FL), June 23, 1967: "The reader is treated to views of down-home, rough-and-ready, half-mile, dirt-track racing, as well as the expensive and sophisticated Grand National division."
NASCAR mass media
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