Auto Biography: A Classic Car, an Outlaw Motorhead, & 57 Years of the American Dream - Hardcover

Swift, Earl

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0062282662 ISBN 13: 9780062282668

Publisher: It Books, 2014

Synopsis

An unforgettable ode to American car culture, award-winning author Earl Swift's wise, funny, and captivating narrative follows an outlaw-genius motorhead as he attempts to restore an iconic 1957 Chevy from rusted-out wreck to gleaming, chromed work of American art--before the FBI closes inA classic '57 Chevy, in wretched shape: Its surviving paint is sun-bleached, salt-pocked, and cracked like a dry lakebed. Its engine hasn't turned over in years. Slumped among hundreds of other rusting hulks on a windswept patch of eastern North Carolina, the Chevy evokes none of the Jet Age optimism that made it the most beloved and instantly recognizable car to ever roll off an assembly line. But for its unlikely rescuer--a felon arrested seventy-odd times, and a man who's been written off as a ruin himself--the Chevy isn't junk, it's a fossil of the twentieth-century American experience, of a people devoted to and forever changed by the automobile. For Tommy Arney, it's a piece of history, especially so because its decrepit skin conceals a rare asset: a complete provenance, stretching back more than fifty years through twelve previous owners. So, hassled by banks and the FBI, the Chevy's thirteenth owner embarks on a mission to save the car and preserve the long record of human experience it carries with it--before his own volatile demons doom him and the car.Earl Swift's masterful narrative charts the shifting dreams and fortunes of the people who've gripped this endangered icon's steering wheel, and in the process captures America's strange and abiding relationship with the automobile as no book has before.

About this title

Review:

"Fascinating... The author tells Arney's story deftly and with great, often raw, humor, and it rarely loses momentum."--Booklist

"A true tall tale that doubles as a complicated fable, Auto Biography is the wild and woolly saga of a 1957 Chevrolet station wagon, its 13 owners, and Tommy Arney, the appetite-forward, contradictorily honorable character who restores the four-door chariot to a glory even greater than its original."--Christian Science Monitor

"[A] must read ... It's the bromance of the ages: a ruined man and and a ruined '57 Chevy find happiness in each other's arms."--New York Post

"Engrossing and entertaining.... The narrative tactfully unfolds with deeply human stories of struggle, ambition, hopes, dreams.... Swift is a wonderful guide and the stories he relates are engaging in their own right."--Publishers Weekly

"Dazzling. ... Many readers likely will feel the description Swift paints of Arney in the first page and a half of the book is worth the $26.99 price tag alone."--Daily Progress (Charlottesville, VA)

"A fresh, personal perspective on America's love affair with the automobile."--Joe Bargmann, of Popular Mechanics, Road & Truck, and the wildly popular blog, "Backseat Driver"

"Full of crackerjack reporting and fuel-injected mirth... Swift's lengthy step-by-step description of the disassembly and recreation process is as nail-biting as any drugstore action-thriller. It's hard to conceive of a more riveting (or unriveting) work on the subject than Auto Biography."--Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Entertaining and enlightening."--Fort Worth Star-Telegram

"Swift negotiates a phrase like a car with a tight turning radius."--The Durham Herald Sun

"An entertaining, surprisingly informative and action-packed tale."--Houston Chronicle

About the Author:

Journalist Earl Swift has written five books, including The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways (2011). Since 2012 he has been a residential fellow of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities at the University of Virginia.

About this edition

• Publisher: It Books
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0062282662
• ISBN 13: 9780062282668
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 355