It just keeps getting better. If you enjoyed American Road Racing: The 1930s, you will want to read American Road Racing: 1948-1950. And Joel Finn has promised additional volumes covering 1951+.

Joel's first book enriched us with a history that few of us were around to enjoy. We may have heard of the races, the cars and the drivers featured in his 1930s work, but we only had random pieces of knowledge. Joel presented us with the complete picture. He now takes us to an era when many of us were discovering sports cars and sport car racing for the first time. If you were an early subscriber to Road & Track, Speed Age, Motor Trend or other automotive publications in their formative period of sports cars and racing, this book will be a treasure trove of memories, but more important, it will introduce to you the 95% of information that those magazines failed to deliver, and loads of photographs that you have never seen. For those of you lucky enough to have been in the right places at the right time, and few of us were, you may have been a Sport Car Club of America member and attended some of the races. And if you were too young to have been around then, what a great introduction to the development of sports car racing this is -- by an author who experienced it first hand and began researching and writing this book over 40 years ago.

The prewar Automobile Racing Club of America (ARCA) was transformed into the Sports Car Club of America in 1944 with racing beginning in 1948. Road racing had not just been revived; it had been taken to a whole new level of activity and competition. And it was more exciting than ever. Twelve major road-racing contests were held from 1948 through 1950, beginning with Watkins Glen and ending at Sebring. There were also some casual and informal events held during that period including oval track races, time trials, short hill climbs and acceleration competitions, which are mentioned in the book. As in the previous book, this is not a documentary of tracks, cars and drivers, but an exciting portrayal of the events that reads like a novel. To quote Finn after a thorough review of the SCCA records, "The correspondence reveals that the founders, promoters, organizers and important players in the development of the sport were often consumed with jealousies, rivalries and very serious differences of opinion and outlook. They did not always behave like gentlemen". You will not become bored with pages of facts, but will be glued on how relationships will affect each event. From race to race you will see the development of sports car racing that is far different than you imagined.

The photographs, over 600 of them, make the book a bargain. Did I find anything negative about the book? I was surprised that it did not have an index, since the 1930s book did. But not a flaw that many would even notice or care about unless you are using it for research.

If you did not purchase Finn's first book, American Road Racing: The 1930s, I highly recommend that you buy it along with the second book. Reading them in chronological order will give you a real sense to the flow of events. Now we need Joel to finish up the next in our sports car racing escapades series. An exceptional book and highly recommended.