REVIEW

Speed, Guts, & Glory: 100 Unforgettable Moments in NASCAR History

By Joe Garner
Warner Books, Hachette Book Group USA
MSRP: $25.99

Reviewed by Ian Tocher

Okay, so maybe we don’t really need another “top-100” book about NASCAR history, but Joe Garner’s Speed, Guts, & Glory: 100 Unforgettable Moments in NASCAR History, is at least as entertaining as any. To his credit, Garner at least limits the scope of his tome to 100 “unforgettable” events rather than the more subjective and arbitrary 100 “best” and there’s no question that each moment he describes qualifies for inclusion.

Garner has made quite a career for himself with these “moments” books, having previously penned over the past six years similar titles about TV shows, Hollywood movies, and comedians. In Speed, Guts, & Glory, he divides the moments into 10 categories such as closest finishes, unlikeliest wins, record breakers, and one-win wonders. In a nod to NASCAR’s crown jewel event, there’s even a chapter devoted to 10 unforgettable Daytona 500 moments.

As a bonus to the 240 printed pages of Speed, Guts, & Glory, a DVD narrated by Jeff Gordon is included and features one moment from each of the book’s 10 chapters, agallery of photos taken from the book, and a sit-down interview with Gordon by Garner.

The DVD loads quickly and runs smoothly, but the value of the still photos gallery is questionable, as it seems tacked on only as an afterthought to provide more content and each image is rather small.

Overall, Speed, Guts, & Glory is a decent coffee-table book that most NASCAR fans would be happy to browse through. The moments described truly are unforgettable, but there really isn’t much that’s new or particularly insightful between its covers.  

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