Titles by Brock Yates

Against Death and Time: One Fatal Season in Racing’s Glory Years

Thunder’s Mouth Press / Avalon
Spring 2004
ISBN: 1-56025-770-9

Against Death and Time chronicles one fatal season in the post-war glory years of racecar driving. It is the story of the dispossessed young men who raced for “the sheer unvarnished hell of it.” Yates has been writing for Car and Driver for more than thirty years and is one of the best-known people in the racing world. He raced his own car for a season in a Plimpton-like adventure recorded in one of his six books, Sunday Driver. He has published widely, from Playboy to the Wall Street Journal, and has appeared on every major television network as a racing and automotive industry commentator. Brock integrates unexpected and fascinating detail into this character-driven story of men compelled to compete against themselves, time, and death. His strategy of a fictional narrator observing, interrogating, and reporting on Brock's real-life protagonists imparts the immediacy of fiction to this minutely accurate account. The book is based on Yates’s incomparable experience and interviews with dozens of surviving racers, widows, car owners, mechanics, and historians, and his deep research in the archives of the Speedway, the Detroit Public Library Auto Archive, United States Auto Club, Henry Ford Museum, Smithsonian Institute, and contemporary newspapers and periodicals.

Umbrella Mike: The True Story of the Chicago Gangster Behind the Indy 500

Thunder’s Mouth Press / Avalon
July 2006
ISBN: 1-56025-776-8

He was known as “Umbrella Mike”: a hard man among the beautiful people. He moved among the elite of New York society with little notice, his sharply cocked fedora, his broad Irish face and his ever-present cigar setting him apart from the celebrities and socialites.

Umbrella Mike is Michael Joseph Boyle, the corrupt leader of Chicago’s most powerful union and himself a Chicago gangster on friendly terms with Al Capone. Passionate about high-class automobiles, Umbrella Mike was one of the few who could afford the luxury of racing during the hardship of the Depression. In 1937, dogged by adverse publicity and a barrage of disasters, the prestigious Vanderbilt Cup was held on Long Island.

Brock Yates—noted editor, columnist and sports analyst and commentator—remarkably chronicles the dramatic events that unfolded during this most controversial of races—pitting against one another a Nazi poster child, a German-hating Swiss, and the brilliant American underdog who has a trick or two up his sleeve.

Author Bio

Brock Yates was Editor-at-Large and featured columnist for Car and Driver, erstwhile CBS Sports analyst, and commentator for the Speed Channel Motorsports Cable Network. He is the author of many works including the screenplay for The Cannonball Run and the books Enzo Ferrari and Outlaw Machine. He lives in upstate New York.