“Motorsports Literature At Its Best”
By William I. Brown
I bought this book purely on a whim having little idea who Phil Henny was. It didn’t take completion of the first chapter before I realized I’d hit a gold-mine in automotive literature. It represents some of the best value in overall content and packaging of any motorsports book I’ve read, and I’ve been collecting and reading books about sports car racing for over 40 years. There are scant few memoirs out there written by the men who turned the wrenches, and a number of these frankly have little of substance to say- not so with Henny’s book. With unparalleled access to the world of the great Carroll Shelby, Phil presents an engaging look at an incredible era in racing. To his credit, he doesn’t gloss over any aspect of what he saw, either within or outside of Shelby’s organization. His comments about drivers are particularly insightful. In many respects, this is as good if not better than the vast majority of driver memoirs or books by leading authors in the field (on par with Eoin Young, Anthony Pritchard, Dave Friedman, etc). Phil’s just-released companion work about the great Bob Bondurant should make a welcome addition to the Shelby story. I don’t mean it lightly when I say this is an absolute “must have” book if you’re remotely interested in sports car racing from the 1960s (follow the purchase of “Just Call Me Carroll” with Phil’s book on Bondurant if you wish a more complete picture of Bondurant’s contributions to Shelby’s successes against the might of Ferrari).
