The Racers: How an Outcast Driver, an American Heiress, and a Legendary Car Challenged Hitler's Best by Neal Bascomb (review)

Bascomb, Neal The Racers: How an Outcast Driver, an American Heiress, and a Legendary Car Challenged Hitler's Best. Scholastic Focus, 2020 [336p] illus. with photographs Trade ed. ISBN 9781338277418 $18.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781338277425 $11.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R* Gr. 7-12

Automobiles were barely past infancy when drivers began to race them and manufacturers to push their limits; racers needed excellent design to show off their personal skills, and manufacturers needed highly skilled drivers to show off their marketable designs. National pride quickly grabbed racing by the coattails, and by the 1930s, the dark pall of Nazism shrouded racing, upping the stakes for the well-established trio of driver, manufacturer, and nationalism. Into this heady mix step René Dreyfus, a French-Jewish driver struggling among top tier racers; Rudi Caracciola, a German driver with lots to prove; Lucy Schell, an American heiress who seeks to become the first woman to run a Grand Prix team; the Delahaye auto company, risking everything on Grand Prix racing as other companies withdraw during the global Depression. Bascomb is adept at interweaving historical, biographical, and heart-pounding sports threads into a compulsive whole, in which Hitler and hubris get their comeuppance, and for a brief moment in 1938 before World War II fully detonates, Nazis are bested. With plenty of period illustrations and a fascinating author's note on Bascomb's joyride in a Delahaye 145, as well as bibliography, source notes, and index, this promises broad crossover appeal for teens and adults, history and sports buffs, engineering enthusiasts, and of course, anyone mesmerized by Ford v Ferrari.