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What: “The American Dirt Track Racer”

Author: Joe Scalzo

Publisher: Motorbooks International

Price: $39.95

When you get a Joe Scalzo book, you get racing from a racer’s point of view.

A former motorcycle racer, Scalzo knows and uses the idioms of the racing community, giving his words an authenticity rarely found in motor sports books.

For instance, a crash by A.J. Foyt sent him not to the hospital, but to “the crashhouse,” a cemetery was “a marble orchard,” and dirt-track racing was “a uniquely American invention, like jazz--and, just like jazz, complete with wild tempo changes and mad improvisations and madder characters.”

The years 1951-71 made up what the Sierra Madre author calls “the banner binge of dirt track racing,” with races at such favorite tracks as Langhorne Speedway in rural Pennsylvania, and state fairgrounds ovals at Sacramento, Phoenix, Springfield, Ill., Syracuse, N.Y., and Indianapolis.

Among the drivers featured are Foyt, Jimmy Bryan, Parnelli Jones, Jim “Herk” Hurtubise, Don Branson, Bobby Hogle, Ernie Triplett and Rex Mays, many of whom cut their racing teeth on Southern California dirt.

Nearly every page has stirring photos of those warriors and their cars, mostly photographed by Bob Tronolone.

Either the prose or the pictures alone would make “The American Dirt Track Racer” an ideal book for a racing enthusiast.