Enzo Ferrari

When Enzo Ferrari died in 1988, the world lost the last great titan of the automobile: an autocratic, fiercely competitive entrepreneur who had—over a seventy-year span—come to dominate the world of high-performance cars and make his name synonymous with speed, class, and wealth. And yet Ferrari remains an enigmatic figure, a man whose life is the stuff of legend but about whom few facts are known. Was Ferrari the benign padrone often portrayed by an adoring world press, or a ruthless despot who drove his staff—and his drivers—to the edge of madness? Ferrari was in fact an extremely complex man, a man who rose from modest origins in Modena, Italy, to create the worlds most exotic automobiles, an incredibly powerful business and racing empire, and one of the most successfully marketed images of all time. Having penetrated Ferrari's elaborately constructed shell by interviewing over one hundred people who worked with him through the years, Brock Yates traces his life in meticulous detail, capturing not only the spirit of this driven man, but also the historical and personal events that shaped his life: struggles through two world wars, endless love affairs, fiendish political intrigues, repeated financial crises, his obsession with racing, and the death, in 1956, of his only legitimate son, Dino. This unique and fascinating life is set against the backdrop of the history of high-performance cars and motor sports from World War I to the present. Portrayed in dramatic detail are the early days of the Bugatti, the Maserati, the Alfa Romeo, and, of course, the Porsche, as well as the great drivers and races, Nuvolari and Fangio and the classic battles of the Grand Prix. Here, then, is the life of a man who dominated his field more than anyone of our century A man who was, truly, larger than life.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.