Thursday, January 14, 2016

Speed Kings by Andy Bull

     The cover of Andy Bull's Speed Kings says it covers the 1932 Winter Olympics and the "fastest men in the world", meaning bobsledders. The book does just that, but it does so much more beyond those points. The book covers the rise of bobsledding as a sport, how it worked into the Olympics, and the men who took part in the games; however, that is just a small part of what Speed Kings is all about.
     Speed Kings is a well-written personality profile of some of the eccentrics, playboys, scholars, athletes and questionable personalities of the early twentieth century. It covers characters in high finance, politics, Hollywood, sports and military history. Though this may seem like quite the hodgepodge, Bull does a great job in keeping all of these people fresh, entertaining and relevant to the story. Who would have imagined so many unique ties to bobsledding?
     If you are looking for the extreme details, technicalities and minutia of the sport of bobsledding, you are not going to find it in Speed Kings. What you are going to find is a fun, fast read that opens the door to a lot of other subjects and people you may not be familiar with in this country's past history. Think of it as a threshold book to many other non-fiction subjects - Cary Grant meets the Nazi Party meets the Dewey Decimal System.

No comments: