“In suitably fast-paced prose, Goldstone tells the enthralling story of the fraught early days of the ‘Horseless Age.’ The cast in the high-stakes battle includes brilliant engineers, Gilded Age tycoons, and reckless daredevils both on the track and in the boardroom—a heady mix of motors, money, and testosterone. Silicon Valley’s billionaires have nothing on these guys for either ingenuity or ruthlessness.”
—ROSS KING, author of Brunelleschi’s Dome
“Drive! is an exquisite treasure. Titanic court battles; personal feuds among robber barons; hair-raising, death-defying early automobile races; and a slice of history, beautifully researched and written, that shaped the country in the early twentieth century—there is something in this book for all lovers of epic, transformative struggles.”
—DALE OESTERLE, Reese Chair, Moritz College of Law, Ohio State University
“A wonderful, story-filled saga of the early days of the auto age…While aspects of Goldstone’s book will be familiar to auto buffs, the story is so compelling and well-crafted that most readers will be swept up in his vivid re-creation of a bygone era. The book abounds with detailed accounts of races, auto shows, and heroic cross-country journeys and explains in plain English the advances in automotive engineering that transformed early vehicles from playthings of the wealthy to functional, low-cost cars for the masses. ‘Horse Is Doomed,’ read one headline in 1895. This highly readable popular history tells why.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred)