REAL NASCAR: WHITE LIGHTENING, RED CLAY, AND BIG BILL FRANCE. LECTURE WITH AUTHOR DAN S. PIERCE. DR. PIERCE IS ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR AND CHAIR OF THE HISTORY DEPARTMENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT ASHEVILLE. THURSDAY, MAY 6| 2:30-4 P.M. AT THE UNC GENERAL ALUMNI CENTER
Real NASCAR: White Lightning, Red Clay, and Big Bill France, by Daniel S. Pierce, is hot off the press and hitting bookstores now. If you’re a racing fan or southern history buff, this book is the can’t-miss backstory behind Nascar, which has become a billion-dollar industry and one of the most popular spectator sports in America. Pierce writes as a historian and a fan, focusing on the sport from the 1940s to the 1970s. This is the NASCAR of sandy beaches and dirt tracks, racing for fun by day and racing from the law by night. NASCAR legend “Humpy” Wheeler calls this book “NASCAR 101,” and he ought to know. No other book gives the full early history of this wildly popular sport. Pierce knows his stuff. But his history doesn’t end with the last page of his book. He’s blogging at realnascar.com, so you can check in every week for Pierce’s historical insight into what’s happening on the track today. So far he’s blogged about the new History Channel reality series Madhouse and the Bowman Gray Stadium in Winston-Salem where it is filmed, Danica Patrick and the surprising history of women stock car drivers, the rising and falling fortunes of the sport and its on-again/off-again courtship with Detroit automakers.
FREE to Friends of The Center of the Study of the American South. Please call (919) 843-5115 to RSVP.