We all know that Father’s Day was invented to force children to panic purchase gifts that reveal their confounding and unexamined feelings about, well, just about everything. This year, instead of another platinum-plated melon baller, brogued leather manscaping trimmer holster, cashmere onesie, or reclaimed barn wood wallet, why not get dad something elemental and sure to please? A book! Specifically, a book about cars.We’re not saying all dads like cars, or reading. We’re just saying that if you’re perusing Car and Driver dot com, there’s a scientifically-proven likelihood that someone in your family helped foster your affection for cars and reading. And since Mother’s Day already passed, you should take this opportunity to celebrate. (It’s still perfectly acceptable to send Mom a few of these books as belated thanks.)The books below are all wonderful exemplars of how to make cars compelling on the page. As a bonus, if you give one of them to your dad, you can always ask to borrow the copy (or download) after he’s done. So, like all the best presents, it’s a gift to yourself as well!
1
Bond Cars: The Definitive History
No fictional superspy has combined longevity and automotive affection more cohesively than 007. This handsomely illustrated book, penned by famed automotive writer and author Jason Barlow, explores that connection in thrilling detail, parsing every car Bond ever drove on screen. With direct access to the Bond archives, and Bond vehicle supervisors, it will leave you shaken and stirred.
2
Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance
Author and professor Mia Bay takes on the horrific history of post-Civil War American racism through the lens of the transportation industry. In this supremely researched book, Bay charts the ways in which racial segregation corrupted every new category of transit—trains, buses, cars, planes—as well as how transportation became a locus for resistance and the Civil Rights movement.
3
Lane Motor Museum: A Hobby Gone Wild
lanemotormuseum.org $44.99
Nashville’s Lane Motor Museum is the brainchild of Jeff Lane, an automotive obsessive of the highest caliber. Jeff’s collection encapsulates the bizarre glory of motorized transport, featuring obscure microcars, amphicars, gyrocars, propeller cars, and more. With a forward by Jay Leno, and text by automotive historian Ken Gross, this book will whet your appetite to visit The Lane.
4
Corvette Stingray: The Mid-Engine Revolution
The eighth-generation Corvette finally followed through a plan that had been in the works almost since Chevrolet’s “Plastic Fantastic” sports car came into existence: placing the engine behind the passenger compartment. This book, created in cooperation with Chevrolet, tells that story in remarkable detail. (Full disclosure: your author wrote the sections on design.)
5
Don “The Snake” Prudhomme: My Life Beyond the 1320
Car and Driver senior editor Elana Scherr spent a year chatting with drag racing legend Don “The Snake” Prudhomme, eliciting anecdotes and revelations about his remarkable life and career. This charming book collects and distills those stories into a breezy, fun-to-read tome, one that is, at heart, about the soul of racing.
6
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars
Essayist Simon Van Booy and automotive writer Harvey Briggs go behind the scenes, and deep into the archives, of one of the most prestigious automakers in the world. There, they discover the obsessive attention to craftsmanship, and the constant adaptations of new technology, that have kept Rolls-Royce at the pinnacle of the automotive pyramid for 115 years.
7
Carchitecture: Houses with Horsepower
carchitecture lannoopublishers.com €39.99
The connections between automotive and residential design are not always evident, but they are so varied and deep that architects Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, and Gio Ponti all designed cars. This lavishly photographed monograph, from Belgian lifestyle journalist Thijs Demeulemeester, pairs notable buildings with notable cars, with essays that explore their fascinating overlap.
8
Madhouse at the End of the Earth
random house penguinrandomhouse.com $30.00
This book is not about cars. But it does focus on a previous means of adventuring and exploring: boat travel, and via the tale of a massively failed 19th century expedition to the South Pole. Journalist and editor Julian Sancton tells the story breezily and thrillingly, but sparing no horror—seasickness, darkness, cold, insanity, felinicide, brawling, scurvy, penguin-eating.
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