Neal Thompson

Driving with the Devil

"A definite crowning achievement... Thompson’s writing is superb. He is a grand storyteller and does his homework."
-The Boston Herald

“A finely tuned history of racing, from its rural roots in the 1930s to the multimillion-dollar industry it is today.”
-Indianapolis Star

"A thrilling ride ... a fascinating and fast-moving account of NASCAR's fledgling days. Thompson brings an infectious energy to this stretch of Southern history - even if you don't know a master cylinder from a head gasket."
-Hal Jacobs, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

" Driving With the Devil is a full-tilt excursion through the back roads of NASCAR's past, when moonshiners and scofflaws pioneered the sport. This is a tale that sanitized corporate NASCAR would rather forget about, but with Neal Thompson at the wheel, it makes for wonderful reading. "
-Sharyn McCrumb, author of St. Dale

" Driving with the Devil is a treasure trove of historically relevant information which tracks the history of the American automobile industry, the culture and morality of the broader society and the motivations and personalities of early stock car racing. "
-Jack Roush, chairman of Roush Racing

" Excellent... shows a deep understanding of how Nascar racing essentially owns the world south of the Mason-Dixon Line. "
-Brock Yates, Wall Street Journal ("Five Best Books on Car Racing" - Driving with the Devil is #1)

" [A] valiant attempt to put the nasty back in NASCAR. Thompson has attitude, curiosity and affection (and) he knows how to get inside the character of the eccentrics who shaped the sport."
-The Chicago Sun-Times

" The real story of how it all started ... If you love NASCAR, you ought to care about how it began, and that’s why Driving with the Devil is as important a stock-car racing book as has ever been written... Unlike NASCAR’s modern mythmakers, Thompson’s heroes are the moonshiners and the misfits."
-Monte Dutton, The Gaston Gazette

"Driving with the Devil is a most impressive piece of work. Most Americans have the vague notion that big-time stock-car racing sprang from moonshine-hauling in the Southern Appalachians prior to the Second World War, but here is documented proof that it was that and much more. Neal Thompson's Driving with the Devil nails it once and for all: a riveting report any student of Americana will cherish. It's no more about racing than The Old Man and the Sea is about fishing."
-Paul Hemphill, author of Lovesick Blues: The Life of Hank Williams and Wheels: A Season on NASCAR's Winston Cup Circuit

"[A] raucous account of NASCAR's early decades ... the enthusiasm of this breathless, nostalgic account will be contagious to Southern history buffs and historically minded NASCAR fans."
-Publisher's Weekly

"Neal Thompson has written NASCAR's Glory of Their Times. He tells the true story of NASCAR's beginnings, revealing the sports' strong whiskey roots and letting us get to know its key movers and shakers including the triumvirate of racer Red Byron, mechanic Red Vogt, and bootlegger car owner Raymond Parks. Like Seabiscuit, Thompson makes a sport and an era come wonderfully alive. "
-Peter Golenbock, author of Miracle: Bobby Allison and the Saga of the Alabama Gang and American Zoom: Stock Car Racing - From Dirt Tracks to Daytona

"NASCAR fans will love this book. Non-NASCAR fans might love it even more. Thompson opens the window into NASCAR's past and shows us with wonderfully drawn characters and humorous stories how it became America's fastest growing sport. Driving With The Devil is one of those rare books that entertains as well as educates. His research is impressive, but it is his ability to make old-time characters come alive that makes this book a fascinating read."
-Harry MacLean author of In Broad Daylight

"[Thompson] displays all the skill of a seasoned journalist in his pacing and savvy storytelling ... his grasp of the sport's history is abundant and presentation of anecdotes exceedingly interesting."
-Kirkus

"It is a fascinating read - part sports, part culture - and perhaps as close as any book has come to exploring and explaining stock car racing's deep Southern roots."
-Larry Woody, The (Nashville) Tennessean

"This book gives us a unique insight into the early culture of NASCAR, in a way we've never seen."
-H.A. "Humpy" Wheeler, president, Lowes Motor Speedway

"Thompson mines the rich heritage of Southern culture and mixes macho adventurists, speed, grim determination, and the automobile, capturing not only the regional appeal of the sport, but also the tenor of the times. This is recommended as a revealing look at the oldest history of what has grown to be a multi-billion-dollar industry and the second most popular spectator sport in the country."
-Library Journal

"This is a colorful, multifaceted history of the hell-raising origins of stock-car racing…"
-Booklist

Light this Candle

I think it is one of the finest books ever written about the space program. I thought I knew pretty much everything about the history of the American space effort, including the huge personalities that were the Mercury astronauts, but on nearly every page of this fine book, I learned something new. ((Neal)) has done something quite remarkable here, turned a legend into a real honest-to-God living and breathing and sweating human being. ((I would have thought, of all the astronauts, the least likely candidate for that would have been Alan Shepard, known mostly for his icy demeanor. ((Neal)) has given Shepard's unique humanity a chance to emerge from not only the legend that NASA built around him but the one he built around himself.)) I strongly recommend this book for anyone interested in the first astronauts, the early space program, and the evolution of a man who became a hero despite himself. Alan Shepard, it turns out we didn't know you, after all. Light this candle, indeed.

-Homer Hickam, author of "Rocket Boys" and "The Keeper's Son"

Neal Thompson's Light this Candle is just a wonderful and gripping biography. It is meticulously reported in the best tradition of David Halberstam. It is written with eloquent grace. Most satisfying of all, Light This Candle is the can't-put-it-down story of a modern swashbuckler determined to conquer the universe whatever the risk. In Thompson's hands, an amazing life, the ultimate American life, comes alive so exquisitely.

- Buzz Bissinger, author of "Friday Night Lights" and "A Prayer for the City"

Tough to say what's cooler: that Alan Shepard was the first American in space, or that he hit a golf ball on the moon. Neal's Thompson's "Light This Candle: The Life and Times of Alan Shepard" chronicles the amazing life of the brashest, funniest astronaut ever.

- Men's Health

Irresistible ... a tenacious biography of Shepard's remarkable life. A chapter of American history like no other Thompson hits all the right notes.

- The Buffalo News

Thompson writes with eloquent grace. This is one of the finest books ever written about our space program. The thoroughness of the author's research is impressive.

- The Indianapolis Star

A rare, warts-and-all portrait, and Shepard had a lot of warts. Thompson does a stellar job painting a real-life figure who never really showed his true self to anyone.

- The Vancouver Sun

Reminds us of how the proper blend of bleeding-edge technology and political rhetoric can not only unify but inspire a nation ... A valuable addition to the library of books on the space program.

- The Houston Chronicle

A highly readable effort to explain this remarkable American.

- The Charlotte Observer

Light This Candle" is really a "twofer," that is, two books for one. It is story-telling at its best about a larger-than-life naval aviator-test pilot, astronaut, husband-father. It is also a riveting reminder, in emotional detail, of some forty years of significant events of America's military in combat, aviation history and space race with the Soviet Union. What makes this a hard to put down book is that Thompson makes you feel that you are there. Thompson describes several launches so dramatically, with such suspense, that we wonder, "will this mission make it safely?" Every page is alive with the excitement of aviation, space, Cold War politics, personal back biting and "gotcha" pranks, but mostly the power of the personality of Alan Shepard

-David Hartman (former "Good Morning America Host") US Naval Institute Proceedings

After Shepard's death in 1998, Thompson, a veteran journalist, gained exclusive access to Shepard's papers and interviewed his family and fellow astronauts. His material shows that Shepard was an immensely complicated and conflicted man whose many passions drove him to feats of extraordinary bravery and accomplishment, but also to dangerous flirtations with self-destruction.

-William E. Burroughs (author of "This New Ocean") Smithsonian Air & Space magazine

More than 40 years after Alan Shepard became the first American in space, Neal Thompson's biography has captured the flesh-and-blood human behind the deed. The thoroughness of his research is impressive, and his fast-paced narrative keeps the pages turning.

- Paul Stillwell, Director, History Division, U.S. Naval Institute

Shepard was a very complicated individual. He had all the attributes to be successful, but he always lived on the edge. He had the perseverance to live through his medical problems to finally fly to the moon but he didn’t always follow the rules. Light This Candle captures the many facets of Alan Shepard.

- Capt. James Lovell, astronaut

Alan Shepard comes through as ambitious, cold, and often selfish. He also comes through as competent, determined, and brave.

- The Washington Times

A fine book that depicts Shepard vividly. [The] prose crackles with the kind of energy Americans remember from those first broadcasts from space itself. Thompson’s persistence in interviewing Shepard's surviving colleagues has bared Shepard's soul in ways the man himself seemed incapable of doing. Light This Candle, in contrast to the swagger of Wolfe's Right Stuff, exposes Shepard as a complex individual who had to battle his own ambition and ego to become a better man.

- Kansas City Star

Neal Thompson has taken a larger-than-life figure about whom we thought we knew all we needed to know, subjected him to rigorous investigative reporting and dogged shoe-leather research and produced a gripping, highly readable tale that makes Alan Shepard, one of the iconic figures of the past half century, even more fascinating without diminishing his heroic dimensions.

- Robert Timberg, author of The Nightingale's Song and State of Grace: A Memoir of Twilight Time

Just what a biography should be: sharp, evocative, and brisk.

- Kirkus Reviews

Journalist Thompson reveals another side of this all-American navy pilot with the right stuff. A snappily written, factual counterbalance to Tom Wolfe’s sometimes poetic renderings of the heroes of the early space program. Space buffs and baby boomers who remember Shepard’s gravity-escaping flight should snap it up.

- Publishers Weekly

Thompson has thoroughly researched Shepard…. [The] first full-dress biography of a complex space pioneer.

- Booklist

A quick and thoroughly captivating read.

- Leatherneck Magazine

*Recommended by Barnes & Noble ("our editors pick their favorite reads"):

" Thompson reveals the enigmatic essence of astronaut Alan Shepard, the Space Age hero who -- along with the "right stuff" -- exhibited a mercurial mixture of charm and prickly reserve, discipline and recklessness, generosity and self-promotion."

*Recommended by Borders:

" This absorbing biography is the first full account of Alan Shepard, one of America's first men in space. Thompson had exclusive access to private papers and performed interviews with Shepard's nearest associates."

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