NitroGeezers Book Reviews
 

Fuel and Guts: The Birth of Top Fuel Drag Racing
First hand accounts of history as told by those who lived it

 Tom Madigan lets the original Top Fuel drivers, promoters and innovators tell their stories about the beginning of Top Fuel drag racing in his latest book, Fuel and Guts: The Birth of Top Fuel Drag Racing. This is the story of how Top Fuel drag racing started in California, told by those who lived it. As a contributor to Popular Hot Rodding as well as a competitor, driving his own Top Fuel burning dragster, Madigan was an insider and close personal friend to those involved. Now he uses that status to offer background to twenty nine first-hand accounts of those who influenced the early years of the sport, like Tony Nancy, Tommy Ivo, Bob Muravez, Tom McEwen, Don Prudhomme, Ed Pink and Kent Fuller (see the complete list below). He also pays tribute to the women of racing like Veda Orr, Peggy Hart, Judy Thompson Creach, Barbara Parks and Linda Vaughn. Tom Madigan was there from the start and tells their tales and allows readers to hear directly from those who helped mold the sport in their own words. Featuring 242 rare color and black-and-white photos from the personal archives of Madigan's close friends,
 Fuel & Guts tells the intimate stories that take you back in time and shows how it all started.

The Practical Joker

Car owner Roland Leong was constantly playing jokes on his teammates and other competitors. He loved to irritate chassis builder Kent Fuller by leaving the letter "t" out ­of Fuller's first name on Leong's Hawaiian Top Fuel Dragster. Roland Leong's prank still lives on today. When Fuel and Guts was in the final editing stage, the editor noticed that there was a "t" missing in the Kent Fuller Chassis logo from the photo on page 181. "Certainly Leong's car would have the correct spelling of the chassis builder," the editor thought, so he changed Kent Fuller's name to match the dragster's photo. Somewhere Roland Leong is having a good laugh as his prank lives on. The misspelling was not the error of the author, Tom Madigan, and will be corrected in the second printing.

Fuel and Guts is available in bookstores everywhere or through www.motorbooks.com
or
www.amazon.com

My Thoughts;

This new book is a "must have" for anyone interested in the history of Drag Racing and will keep you mesmerized for hours as you re-live the best days of our sport. Hundreds of great photos, some never seen in public before help to form the picture in your mind as if you were right there. The stories relayed by the author are both interesting and informative and come from the greats of the formative years of Top Fuel.

"Put this one on the TOP of your list"

George Crittenden, Nitrogeezers.com