Janet Guthrie: A Life at Full Throttle
By Janet Guthrie
Foreword by Billie Jean King
There has never been a racecar driver like Janet Guthrie. If you doubt that, try coming up with the name of any other graduate of Miss Harris' Florida School for Girls who has gone on to rev an Offenhauser engine on the starting grid at the Indianapolis 500.
Foreword by Billie Jean King
From her birth in Iowa to her early days growing up in Florida, to her years as an engineer in the aerospace industry, and on through two decades spent hanging out at racing tracks all over North America, Guthrie always danced well beyond the bright lights of convention. She soloed for the first time in an airplane at 16, on way to becoming a pilot, flight instructor and an aerospace engineer. Always an adventurer, never a follower, forever a pioneer, Guthrie was the first woman to race at the Indy 500 (her helmet and racing suit are in the Smithsonian Institution) and the Daytona 500.
In her own carefully-crafted words, Guthrie tells her story from the very beginning. Nearly two decades in the gestation and writing, Janet Guthrie: A Life at Full Throttle succeeds by first capturing in poignant detail the complexity of the racing business and the essence of the racing life, particularly in terms of what it's like to steer the most powerful racecars on earth down a straightaway at 230 miles per hour.
The most famous and successful female driver ever to pull on a fire suit eloquently recounts the barriers she overcame in the 1970s to become a female success story in a sport fueled as much by machismo as gasoline, recalling the senses of isolation and of deep frustration and, to be sure, the moments of sheer joy and exhilaration that were also part and parcel of her journey.
Ultimately, Guthrie, who remains a media and network favorite whenever the subject of women in sports hits the news, emerges as a genuine and heart-felt voice for the legions of female pioneers, an Amelia Earhart for the modern age.
