CHARLES LEERHSEN INTERVIEWED BY THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR! Racecar driving: even 100 years ago, excitement outweighed the danger Charles Leerhsen's new book, Blood and Smoke: A True Tale of Mystery, Mayhem and the Birth of the Indy 500, details the wild early days of the sport. Read the full interview here
	BLOOD AND SMOKE: THE VIDEO! Charles Leerhsen talks about Blood and Smoke: A True Tale of Mystery, Mayhem and the Birth of the Indy 500 Watch the video here
	BLOOD AND SMOKE IN THE NEW YORK TIMES! Who Really Won? It's Not So Simple By Stuart Warner Read the article here
	CHARLES LEERHSEN ON NPR'S WEEKEND EDITION! Interviewed by Liane Hansen Read about it, plus excerpt, and listen to the interview here
	CHARLES LEERHSEN ON NPR'S THE TAKEAWAY! Interviewed by Celeste Headlee Listen to the interview here
	CHARLES LEERHSEN INTERVIEWED BY POPULAR MECHANICS! Read the interview here
	BLOOD AND SMOKE GETS A STARRED REVIEW IN LIBRARY JOURNAL! The earliest auto races were more about endurance than speed, writes Leerhsen (Crazy Good: The True Story of Dan Patch, the Most Famous Horse in America). Cars were more likely to break down, burst into flames, or fall apart than complete the race, and drivers weren’t sure they’d be alive at the finish line. Early automakers wanting to promote sales of their cars—like Louis Chevrolet—and promoters looking to net a tidy profit joined forces to promote auto racing as a spectator sport. With alternating tales of horrifying crashes and the schemes of Carl Fisher, who promoted the Indianapolis Speedway as a venue for airplane races, this is a ripping good yarn of America in the early 20th century. Leerhsen, a witty storyteller, draws from contemporary articles, histories, and interviews to pull readers into a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the building of the Speedway and the first race. VERDICT While the primary audience is auto racing fans and those interested in Indiana history, this book has broad appeal, with laugh-out-loud stories and characters who would be unbelievable if they turned up in fiction. Highly recommended. —Susan Belsky, Oshkosh P.L., WI
	BLOOD AND SMOKE GETS A RAVE IN KIRKUS! On the centennial of the Indy 500, controversy still reigns over who won the inaugural race, as this lively account of a tumultuous event makes plain. History comes alive through the research and prose of Leerhsen (Crazy Good: The Story of Dan Patch, the Most Famous Horse in America, 2008), formerly the executive editor of Sports Illustrated. The early days of auto racing ignited plenty of controversy—whether it was even a sport, whether it should be allowed (it seemed far more dangerous than bullfighting, outlawed in the States) and whether, as the New York Times wrote in an editorial headlined “Slaughter as a Spectacle,” the races “bring out the very worst of human nature by providing a most barbarous form of excitement…They are an amusement congenial only to savages and should be stopped.” If such controversy didn’t already give this book enough of a charge, the characters do, led by the entrepreneurial racetrack co-founder “Crazy” Carl Fisher, whose own wife characterized her impulsive, adulterous, reckless spouse as a “lusty and incomprehensible personality.” Then there are drivers such as Barney Oldfield, “the Daredevil Dean of the Roaring Road” who “didn’t have an altruistic bone in his body, but he had a very low threshold of boredom, and plain-vanilla racing excited him as much as it did the average citizen.” For years, plain vanilla appeared to be the only alternative to banishment, as the fledgling sport succumbed to offering a series of short races, much like horse racing, rather than the longer ones that would be more likely to push drivers to destruction and even death. “Which was, of course, why a lot of people came to the auto races,” writes Leerhsen. “Not to see death, exactly, in most cases—but to spend some time luxuriating in its titillating possibility.” And a surprising number of those most titillated were women, as the macho sport proved quite the chick magnet, and anything that suggested strategy was dismissed as “weakness, even femininity.” By the time the big race rolls around, Leerhsen has already spun a fascinating tale.
	BLOOD AND SMOKE EXCERPTED IN SPORTS ILLUSTRATED! Start of Something Big / 5.30.1911: The Inaugural Race Arrived Amid Unprecedented Hype and Ended in Swirls of Dust—and Controversy Read the excerpt here
	BLOOD AND SMOKE EXCERPTED IN SMITHSONIAN! 100 Years of the Indy 500: A century ago, the first Indianapolis 500 race started in high excitement and ended in a muddle Read the excerpt here
	BLOOD AND SMOKE GETS A RAVE IN THE DAILY RACING FORM! "Gentlemen, start your coffins. That perfect line came originally from the late, great Los Angeles Times sports columnist Jim Murray, but was so appropriate that Charlie Leerhsen, the latter-day Murray and former executive editor of Sports Illustrated, borrowed it with attribution to start his exceptional new book, Blood and Smoke." "Leerhsen writes with gliding grace...with incredible truth and incisive humor and detailed structure" —Stan Bergstein Read the full review
	BLOOD AND SMOKE EXCERPTED IN INDIANAPOLIS MONTHLY! The Hoosier Channel: Checkered Past As everyone knows, Ray Harroun won the first Indy 500 a century ago. But is everyone right? Investigating the chaos, crashes, and confusion of the inaugural race. Read the excerpt here
	BLOOD AND SMOKE COVERED IN THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR! Columnist Bob Kravitz says that Blood and Smoke "should be required reading for anybody with so much as a vague interest in the birth of the Speedway and the 500." Read the whole column here
	BLOOD AND SMOKE: A TRUE TALE OF MYSTERY, MAYHEM AND THE BIRTH OF THE INDY 500 Now available on Amazon!