race car in 193's due to jewish heritage and we look at authors of u.s. economy and presidential election and the potential need for mail-in voting. this is from the recent virtual bay area book festival. for more information check your program guide or visit booktv.org. now here is author neal bascun. i would like to thank all of our supporters. especially now we are coming to support your needs with educational supplying, books to help ease your mind and books to stimulate your mind and puzzles and games to occupy everyone's time and ship to go anywhere in the country. we have happy to be be able to bring our events here virtual and helps our message of being a

community bookstore. we believe that it's a way to spade your mind and make the world a better place. we are happy to offer books that can be shipped directly to you. we hope that you enjoy the events by purchasing a copy for you or for any of your friends at leftbank.com. purchasing the books will help us continue providing with incredible events directly to wherewhere you are. shane mullen. i'm so happy to be able to bring this event to you tonight. we are taking questions of the audience periodically so please type your questions as a comment and i will read them to you as

they come up and as we gather a couple of the comments. i will also provide the links and legendary cart beat hitler's best. they were the unlikely. had been banned from the best european teams and fasters gars by the -- cars by the mid-30's because of jewish heritage. lucy shell, daughter of multimillionaire to reclaim glory of her driving days.

these 3 misfits, banded together to challenge hitler's dominance at at the apex of motor sports. the quest for redemption culminated in race that is still talked about today and soon after ended hitler attempted to completely erase from history bring to go light glamorous era and symbolic blow against the nazis during history's darkest hour. michelle, new york's best author and 13 hours says it's a full-thought throttle reminder of heros to inspire us in dark times.

neil bascomb has brought done everything to challenge evil. sports, politics and human passion collide in this book. bringing excitement of motor racing onto page but it succeeds hugely. victory over the nazis is a victory for us all. and tonight neal bascomb is award-winning author of the winter portrait, the perfect mile among others and he grew up in st. louis, welcome from afar and now i would like to bring in neal into the conversation and so if you all where you're watching could give a round of applause for neal bascomb.

>> hello, everybody. >> hello. >> thank you, shane, for that great introduction. >> thank you. so i do want to say for anyone watching, sorry, for anyone watching that is not incredibly familiar with auto racing with the history of cars, for me personally, this was such an incredible and very easy, not easy but very enthralling parade and comparisons to the book is boys in the boat and sea biscuit but for other sports i don't know anything about i feel like this was very appropriately matched but now i'm going to let neal talk a little bit about the book and tell you and then i will come in and ask some

questions. >> you bet. well, thanks again, shane. nice to be talks to left bankbooks as i'm a native st. louisan. i came to write the factor, i was in new york and a very good friend of mine i was standing with asked me and asked my press release about this car, little known car by the manufacturer named delahey who had been resurrected, banded, brought by american millionaire and restored and then raced at the pebble beach concord, it kind of

look like a prime mantis on wheels but the back story itself that was profiled that the concord was a delahey soon after the nazis invaded paris, hitler sent several of his men to find the car and have it destroyed. he also sent individuals to, ss officers to automobile club of france, all the records were stolen, taken by the nazis and destroyed and never been seen since. i was intrigued by the story of what the car could have done to engender such a response from history, what was it about, this car, what was about this event in the grand prix that made it so important and as i began to

sort of story and jewish driver and the fact that he was a reluctant hero, his father was conservative jewish faith. his mother was catholic. he didn't really described any one religion or another as he said driving was his religion and mid-30's and symbol of the jewish people against the nazis and that's the story at his heart coupled with the fact that had tremendous female her win, lucy shell at the heart of it, she was an american and instead she was just this very brave and

brazen individual who became one of the earliest female race car drivers. she was one of the most monte carlo best car drivers and best american and she decided at 1936 to take on the germans, she would fund, support, lead the development of a race car and a team to beat the nazis and i was pretty much done at that point and then began with the course of roughly 2 years researching this really little known story. there was few mentions in any books and one of those stories that you had to dig up from the past, family members going all over france and europe and elsewhere to discover the people involved in the story and what exactly happened, why it happened and who the individuals

were and who motivated them. this is a tremendously fun book. i wouldn't call myself a car guy but after spending 3 years in this world and having the experience of even driving this restored delahey race car i would call myself carve right now. i would like to make this as interactive as possible. this is my first bookstore virtual event. >> i have a couple of questions that i wanted to ask from my reading. the first that just struck me so much was how dangerous racing was and how many people perished from these races, like, whether they would be spectators or race

officials, were the numbers kind of stagger to -- staggering to u or was it it was notable to me by the reading? >> no, it was absolutely staggering. i wrote a book about skyscrapers and new york in the 20's and i was awill remembered at that point how many people actually perished in the buildings but nothing compared to these -- what the dangers of race car drivers. this period of time which many people call the golden age of racing was also one of the deadliest times because cars had really gone from going, you know, at the very best 100 miles per hour over the course going to 100 miles per hour with no advancements whatsoever really in safety.

i mean, today we have, you know, people still die of race car driving today but they are in cages, fireproof clothes, they have helmets, they are very insulated. at this time the 30, even though the cars were going so much faster, they didn't wear harnesses or didn't have seat belts. they literally had to brace their legs because the side of the cockpit, the driver's side had to stay inside and had cap that was about it and, of course, no capable or anything like that, so it would not be uncommon for drivers, for one or two drivers to perish every single weekend in the grand prix. it was just absolutely devastating and death was as renee drefus said it was

something that you had to expect, yeah, a very lethal sport at the time and became more lethal as countries began stating their national pride on how fast their cars go and that's the heart of how faster is about. the nationalism that ended up affects grand prix racing in 1936. >> another thing that i noticed it was comparison made to the time and current. and i know that there are a a lt of comparisons that people may or may not disagree with, but you did make some very spot-on comments about the racial

disparity that was happening then, but another thing that -- that i am surprise today even know about is the cars right before -- yeah, right before world war ii where the automobile makers were stopping production of cars to focus on delivery vehicles and trucks, and i think right now is stopping a lot of production of their cars and switch to go trucks and i didn't know if that was another just eerie comparison to the time or if it's also kind of a mild marker, if you will. >> yeah, i mean -- >> anything to add to that? >> yeah, one of the aspects of the story that was so compelling

to me was the time period. i've written about world war ii, before i've written about post world war ii but i've never really concentrated on what happened in the 30's before the war and it was a time of absolute upheaval, obviously people were coming into and eventually out of the great depression and so automobile manufacturers, at that point in time were very much impacted by that, so delehay, which was maker in the urge of bankruptcy in 1932 and 1933, as you said sort of had to make the critical decision, you know, are we going to build trucks, are we going to build utility vehicles, are we going to continue with our cars that one critic said will probably best suited for a

funeral procession and are we going to try to do something different and ultimately in 33 and 34 they decided to race again which is a dramatic leap from what they were doing. similarly you find the germans mercedes auto union in upheaval in this point in time and trying to figure out how they can survive and what they can do and so that is where really hitler comes into the picture, after he rises to power. he makes it kind of his mission to revive the german automobile company and he says in second speech he ever gave as the leader of the third right was the berlin motor show in 1933 and he said, we will build the

the auto bonn and i will dominate grand prix racing and all of that came about the economic, social, political upheaval that was happening at that point in time and so i wouldn't be surprised, you know, that there are many reflections of that, of course, in today. absolutely. >> back then the race cars that they were building was designed -- they were hoping to display them during the races for sale, so that people would buy these whereas today the race car that is we have are not appropriate for drive any sort of street.

when did that break up -- this is my own personal curiosity, when did it branch out from being sort of showcase for cars that you can purchase to being such a specific sport? >> i mean, really, this is because i wrote about the time period that i'm answering this way. i think it's very true. this really happened in the late 20's and 30's, difference split. delay, for instance, the best way to describe, describe what delay did, was the car company that lucy went to to build race car and then what the germans did with mercedes, with delahey,

automobile company and they decided with the help of lucy shell to build a grand prix race car. okay, we will build the grand prix race car but the engine, the chasse, every part of the car needs to be able to be suited for building a passenger vehicle that we can sell to the general population, and so that, of course, puts a lot of different parameters in many ways road blocks to what exact kind of car and what kind of power and it is much more difficult because it has the stipulation. you look at what the germans did by contrast, you know, the german cars whether

from mercedes or auto union were called silver arrows because of their sleek, modern, aluminum body design. those cars, everything about them had no -- no chance they were going to be passenger vehicles. they were explicitly built, designed, built, manufactured to be grand prix race cars and that's it. they were not concerned about selling the vehicles to the general population. their victory in the grand prix had special aspects to it because it was good advertising for their company, you know, we the build the fasters cars in the world so buy our passenger vehicles, but they had no correlation from that. they were largely built,

invested in as propaganda for mercedes and auto unions but also propaganda for the third right and so every aspect of those millions of dollars that were poured into their coffers to build their cars was as a nationalistic gamut and that's exactly what they were for a very long time. >> switching the pace a little bit or witching, you know, research, so when -- a question that i would like to ask, when you were doing your research, was there something that you found that was so striking and so, like such an incredibly interesting fact that maybe it didn't fit into this book but that may be like something that you want to work into a future

book or something that you just were so struck by that didn't make its way into the book that you wished it could have in some ways? >> i think that's a hard question. >> i can't think of anything really specific that i found in the research that i was like, oh, i wish i could use this but i just -- i just can't. i mean, the story of, you know one aspect, one part of the story of renee dreyfus, he lived two lives, two separate lives. he was a race car driver and that's his story, but after the break of world war ii, he left for the united states and had

this dramatic second part, joined the u.s. army and involved in the invasion of italy, helped free europe from the nazis and then went back to the united states, brought his family there, his brother, sisters and ended upstarting probably one of the most successful french restaurants in new york city fixture on restaurant scene, and, you know, lived his life and died as new yorker. 4 sentences, maybe a paragraph,

but, you know, you could write a whole book about that, his autobiography, memoir is called my two lives. race car driver then becomes, of course, the restauranteur. the other part of research that i couldn't get as much as i wanted to was the remarkable stories of the speed queens like of lucy shell, generation of women and in the late 20's and 30's who really pioneered women being part of -- of car racing, sort of fought all of the sexism, inherent sexism and

in many ways broke the glass ceiling and they own their presence in many ways to lucy shell and commodore of women who survived everything to do what they love which is to race cars, and so, you know, again, i won't be the one doing it but if anyone is out there listening, you know, early book to be written about the early speed queens and i recommend someone doing it. >> they were racing, they won separate awards frequently but they were racing at the same time as the male drivers, is that right? >> so, yeah, it depends on the race. in the grand prix itself, if you

were to think grand prix, there's set dictate on what kind of car you can have, set race, and a season and women were not about that in the 1930's. separately from that there were all kinds of different sports car racing, there were rally races, you know, like the monte carlo rallies, the most famous, but races of 3,000 miles from one point to the next, get there as quick as you can as well as races like in italy, a thousand miles, other races like that. there were all kinds of different races. lucy drove, partnered with

husband and almost won monte carlo races 3 times. she also competed in all female as well, and those were quite -- the male rakers -- racers and had -- [inaudible] >> i think you cut out a little bit there. what was the last part? >> the women were probably better rally drivers, long-distance drivers than the men themselves and lucy sort of

proved that point. >> a reminder for anyone who is watching, be sure you text them in the comments and i will read them. also reminder that the book for sale at left can -- left leftbankbooks.com. come from behind sports stories, like the mighty ducks. [laughter] >> sea biscuit, if you have any questions involving history or involving car raceing, i knew very, very little of the history

of car racing. before that i probably -- you know what i thought about car racing was, oh, yeah, something that started in the 60's, 70's and like america and that's when nascar happened. i've been to the nascar, indianapolis speedway. i've been there but i was a child but i don't remember everything that i read and things like that when taking the to work and it was really -- it's a sport that i didn't appreciate the history of and the book does a really good job and making it to some thing that a person likes to read history and i can enjoy.

>> yeah, i mean, like i said, i really wasn't a car guy before i started this and in many ways, the cliché, but the car was just the vehicle of the story of the individuals like renee and lucy as well as the german driver who was nemesis, who was drawn into representing the third right which reluctantly but did so and the conflict between renee and rudy, they were good friends at one point and fascinating to me and in many ways it's no different than if you think of, you know, stories about the b-17 bombers, no one really cares about the bombers and the individuals in it fighting for

the u.s. and freedom of europe and so in many ways the car is the same thing and racing is the same thing, it's just vehicles which they -- they fought their fight. >> i had a question -- [laughter] >> i will drink my old fashion. >> honestly how reluctant you think you are, i know that you say that in the text and i know it's demonstrated but in a lot of ways i kind of -- the more i read about nazi history and the more i see people kind of turning the blind eye and ignoring certain aspects of the party and ignoring what they don't want to see but in a lot

of ways even when they were ignoring and when they -- they still were supporting and still very much in favor of parts of the mission, so whether or not they were fully complicit which a lot of people in the nazi party maybe weren't, but how -- personally support him? i know that he was very -- he was involved early, so how reluctant do you think he completely was. >> it's a great question. the way to answer is to sort of attract his story. he won his first grand prix racing in 1926 and he was a huge celebrity, top driver in germany

by 1932, '33, he knew of the nazi party, he was not a participant in it, not a member of it at that point in time, but then because of the great depression a lot of car companies were abandoning grand prix racing including mercedes and auto union, so by 1933, early '34, rudy was -- had a terrible car accident and was kind of crippled, had just lost his wife in a skiing accident and sort of had the only thing left in his life was racing and getting back into racing and with the rise of hitler and investment in automobile racing and grand prix racing the opportunity presented for rudy

was join the nazi party, become a representative of us or never race again and i think that the answer to that question for him was, not even a reluctant one even though he didn't believe in the ideology or -- or even definitely not the sort of anti-semitism even, but i don't think he hesitated. he joined straightaway. he did everything he could to get back into shape to join the team because racing was his life and there's nothing else for him and so he was willing to do whatever it took, if it meant he could race again. so i -- i'm not apologizing in

any way for rudy because, you know, it's very clear by, you know, 1936-'37 when the germans announced brand prix every single year. rudy was top of the mercedes team and he is a hero of the right and celebrated as such and meets frequently with hitler and speaks in propaganda and he writes editorials and presents himself in films as the right and even , you know, having read everything about him, memoirs, still did not subscribe to the ideology, didn't much care or like hitler but willing to do whatever it took to be best car driver in the world.

it's a complicated story and he was a complicated individual but i think that he ultimately sacrificed his soul for racing. >> and similarly lucy and i'm forgetting -- >> charles, renee? >> rene, they were also were doing anything to be on the race. yeah, you can definitely see the good versus evil-type playout, but they similarly were very much willing to do anything of the things to race. yeah. so you can definitely see that in their stories as well as his.

>> yeah -- [inaudible] >> you know, they knew -- i mean, rudy and his fellow members on the german raceing team, they knew that what's hitler was doing, you know, even before the war. they knew the sort of torture, imprisonments of the jewish people, germany and yet they were still willing to be representatives of that country. so rudy didn't live in germany, was living in switzerland and could quite easily walked the way but he didn't. like you said, like, you know, for renee, for lucy and rudy, something about the life of racing that was so much in their

blood that they couldn't abandon it. and both rudy and renee both write and speak about how, you know, nothing else in life. they've never ever felt really comfortable in the world or at peace in the world except for when they were driving, when they were racing. like for them that was the highlight of their life, the best times, the best moment, that sort of clarity, purpose clarity of mind, that feeling of being in the flow of -- of being in race car, that was everything for them and willing to die for it and for rudy's sake he was going to compromise himself for it. >> does anyone have any

questions -- tim, your book is fantastic though i'm a bit partial to higher. we have a comment. i was hoping it was a question. >> thank you, jim. >> yeah. >> higher was my first book. i've done higher, faster and now, you know, i'm not sure i'm doing longer or anything like that. [laughter] >> stronger next? >> stronger, probably not. i'm not -- no body-building books. >> yeah. have you started working on your next book? >> i have actually. i'm sort of, you know, most of my books are -- i now translate for the young adult audience so faster will be for, you know, seventh and eighth graders or

ninth graders and older and the younger called the racers and schoolastic but my next book will be exclusively young adults books written originally for young adults, nonfiction, about gandhi's sort of first big-nonviolent peace movement which was the march in 1930 which had epic consequences for the freedom of india. it's kind of the story of gandhi told in this -- as you side micro history of this one seminole moment in his life and telling the stories of gandhi and peace movement through this one dramatic time of violence event in 1930 and i'm super, super excited to write it originally for the young adult

audience and as my younger daughter said, it'll probably be the best book because you're writing it for me, so there you go. [laughter] >> yeah. okay. some friends have joined us. jim also says the book seems perfect for film which i agree. are the rights sold? >> so, yeah, the rights sold to someone called comparative entertainment, right at proposal when i submit today publisher and so now it's being developed, we are almost done and i think they're hopefully going for directors soon. of course, i would like to see all my books made into film.

fingers crossed that this will make it. it is very cinematic and it's 1938, very narrow french village. just the scenery and imagining them bracing in that would just be incredible. >> i agree. i would love to watch the film. i love sports films, i love sports books, i just don't think -- [laughter] >> anyone who knows steven spielberg send them a note.

[inaudible] >> did i mention the bookplates. >> thank you. >> i got the new bookplates. go ahead. [inaudible] >> sorry, i was going to say that if anyone does want one of those fantastic bookplates, just when you order the book from leftbankbooks.com, write a note that you would like to sign someone and i will have neal sign the book to you, one of your friends and my father who i'm sure would like the book like i did. who designed those. did they design the cover and the bookplate or just the bookplate? >> so this is the cover. this is the cover art and so they just used the sort of --

this is originally illustrateed for faster. i'm happy to sign it and write comments, not long paragraphs because it's not a very big bookplate. >> yeah. i love the cover. the cover really, it draws people in i think very well, so i wish that people were able to shop in our store. >> that would be fantastic. >> yeah. so it's really hard time for a book to come out especially a book that deserves as much praise and attention as yours does, so i hope that it continues to finds the hands of readers that it needs to find, so, do we have any other

questions? [inaudible] >> yeah. it's really our pleasure and you being from st. louis, we want to support local authors, yeah. when did you move away from st. louis, i forgot to ask you that before? >> at 18. as soon as i went to college, but my family lived there and i still have a lot of family that lives in st. louis so it always has a sound place and i would love coming back and hopefully i'm there i will swing in to left bank. >> yeah, definite i will say hi because we never actually met, so that will be fun. [laughter] >> yeah. >> so i guess -- is there anything that you feel like we haven't talked about? i know there are a couple of things that we haven't talked

about that are probably leading into the climax and things like that. is there anything else that you feel like readers really might be curious about that would convince the book if they haven't already been? >> you know, honestly i just can't say enough about lucy shell just because she was -- as i was telling you earlier when we were talking before we went live. i've written different kinds of books and this is really the first book where there's a sort of a woman at the heart of it and the hero of the story and she was just so fun to write about and it was -- sometimes different chapters are easy to

write and some are hard to write and i found myself every time i was reading about lucy that the words just sort of poured out of me and she kind of burst from the page quite easily because she's such a dynamic person, you know, she would drive with broken limbs and she was very -- she would come in and say exactly what was in your head. i had descriptions of her dialogue and what she was saying and she just was so easy to write and fun to write and it's kind of like the hidden figures kind of individual in this story and it's just, you know, amazing to me that i've never heard of her having read, you know, racing history, you know, over

time and, you know, i can't tell you if i've even spoken to one person over the last 3 years that have ever heard her name but she was, you know, the first woman known in grand prix racing and she was one of those individuals that "the new york times" should write obituary because she very much deserves one and, you know, my pleasure in the book to resuscitate her part during this dramatic time. >> have you talked to any of the descendants of the characters in the book? >> i did. sadly, lucy, she had two sons, one harry, race car driver died racing and another son philip who also died several decades

ago. so when they didn't have any children, initially i was like, dead-end, dead-end, but ultimately the driver's family renee's niece evelyn had kept through the sort of family more, tons of scrapbooks about her -- her uncle, you know, hundreds of pages of articles that had been written in french and italian and english over the course of 40 years, 20 years, what people talked about at his funeral, everything and, of course, knew renee quite well, knew stories of lucy and others and so the book benefited from her sort of overwhelming generosity in the course of this book, not only

photographs and dairies and letters and family history and so ultimately got, you know, all of the taped interviews that renee gave over the course of years to being biographer for his book and if you know anything about writing books, and so i had benefit of hours and hours of these tapes, so hopefully i'm able to tell the story in a way that makes you feel like you're there and you understand renee and lucy and rudy. >> the next comment is not a question either but is actually from my sister, so i think that is really cool.

[laughter] >> i didn't realize that my sister was watching. >> that's great. >> i have a bunch of friends watching which is awesome. yeah. very much like this -- if my father is not watching, i'm not surprised that he will get this for i don't know what holiday but whatever holiday coming up next. >> good. >> probably getting a bookplate for him and sending it in the mail until i could see him next, so, yeah. >> that's sweet. [inaudible] >> yeah. it's a good way to think about current events without actually thinking of current events. yeah. it's so fast-pace, so, yeah, i

agree with yours. father's day is coming up. i forgot about that. >> i like your sister as well. >> yeah. [laughter] >> she's fun. she apparently just got the kids to bed, so, yeah. she's in des moines and my brother is in kansas city with my parents so, yeah, we are all over the place and i'm glad that she was able to stop in and watch. that's the perks of being able to do virtual events, people from all over the country and all over the world can join us that would not have been able to do so had we been doing the event. >> absolutely, i'm still looking forward to coming. >> yes. absolutely. yes. there's -- i mean, that experience is one that i'm sad that people are missing out on

but also fun experience, so, yeah. all right. well, i think that we will probably i guess wrap this up unless we have any other questions and to include people. >> thank you, shane. >> you can order books at left bankbooks.com. i forgot that i did that.

i have it hiding in the production studio the whole time. yeah, order the book, we will get you a bookplate and it'll be wonderful, so, all right, thank you, and we will see you next time. >> thank you. >> here are some of the current best-selling audio books, topping the list two memoirs first becoming by former first lady michelle obama, best-selling book of 2018. that's followed by untamed, after that retired u.s. seal david shares thoughts on self-discipline in can't hurt me and then in talking to strangers, new yorker staff writer examines how we misread words and actions. best nonfiction audio books according to audible former nay say seal -- navy seal dan

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