On sale now, Auto Biography: A Classic Car, an Outlaw Motorhead, and 57 Years of the American Dream by Earl Swift harpercollins/books/Auto-Biography-Earl-Swift/?isbn=9780062282668 An unforgettable ode to American car culture, award-winning author Earl Swifts wise, funny, and captivating narrative follows an outlaw-genius motorhead as he attempts to restore an iconic 1957 Chevy from rusted-out wreck to gleaming, chromed work of American art—before the FBI closes in A classic 57 Chevy, in wretched shape: Its surviving paint is sun-bleached, salt-pocked, and cracked like a dry lakebed. Its engine hasnt turned over in years. Slumped among hundreds of other rusting hulks on a windswept patch of eastern North Carolina, the Chevy evokes none of the Jet Age optimism that made it the most beloved and instantly recognizable car to ever roll off an assembly line. But for its unlikely rescuer—a felon arrested seventy-odd times, and a man whos been written off as a ruin himself—the Chevy isnt junk, its a fossil of the twentieth-century American experience, of a people devoted to and forever changed by the automobile. For Tommy Arney, its a piece of history, especially so because its decrepit skin conceals a rare asset: a complete provenance, stretching back more than fifty years through twelve previous owners. So, hassled by banks and the FBI, the Chevys thirteenth owner embarks on a mission to save the car and preserve the long record of human experience it carries with it—before his own volatile demons doom him and the car. Earl Swifts masterful narrative charts the shifting dreams and fortunes of the people whove gripped this endangered icons steering wheel, and in the process captures Americas strange and abiding relationship with the automobile as no book has before.
Posted on: Tue, 06 May 2014 14:37:07 +0000
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