About this item
An L.A. hot-rodder with a high school education, a family to support, and almost no money, Craig Breedlove set out in the late 1950s to do something big: harness the thrust of a jet in a car. With a growing obsession that would cost him his marriage, he started building in his dad's garage. The car's name was Spirit of America. Through perseverance and endless hard work, Craig completed Spirit and broke the land speed record on the Bonneville Salt Flats, setting a new mark of 407 mph in 1963. He went on to be the first person to drive 500 and 600 mph, breaking the land speed record five times. In the early 1970s he turned to rockets and set an acceleration record at Bonneville that stands to this day. He built a jet car in the 1990s, Spirit of America-Sonic Arrow, to go head to head against Britain's ThrustSSC to be the first to Mach 1.
About the Author
Samuel Hawley has BA and MA degrees in history from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario and worked in East Asia as a teacher for two decades before becoming a full-time writer. His nonfiction books include "The Imjin War," about Japan's 16th-century invasion of Korea and attempted conquest of China, first published in 2005 and reissued in 2014 (Chinese translation forthcoming) ; "Speed Duel: The Inside Story of the Land Speed Record in the Sixties," now being developed by Company Pictures into a TV miniseries; and "I Just Ran: Percy Williams, World's Fastest Human," named one of the five "Best Sports Books of 2011" by the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) . Hawley has also written fiction, starting with the novel "Bad Elephant Far Stream" and continuing with the thriller "Homeowner With a Gun," now in development as a feature film. In his latest book, "The Fight That Started the Movies," Hawley returns to nonfiction to tell the epic story of how the world's first feature-length film came to be made.
