Speed Reader

If I had any kind of head for marketing I'd be introducing this column by saying something along the lines of 'back by popular demand'. In fact, I have not received a single email asking why there has not been a book review on autosport.com for the past year, so instead I am going to plump for, 'back because... um, I want it to be'.

At any rate, the column marks the return of the review section that was a regular part of the autosport.com journal, and before that, Atlas F1, from the late 1990s until 2006. But in bringing it back, we're also making a few minor changes, the most visible being the name - Bookworm Critique made me sound like a nerd...

There will also be a couple of small tweaks to the format. In place of the single, full-length reviews of one book per fortnight, we'll endeavour to mix things up with some extra stuff - perhaps an extra, shorter review of another book (as is the case this week), or a Q&A with an author, or maybe even the occasional detour into the world of DVDs if something interesting happens to land on my desk. If there's anything you'd like to see, feel free to contact us.

Anyhow, enough of the preamble.

Michael Schumacher: The Edge Of Greatness
By James Allen; published by Headline.

It's strange to think that just 12 months ago, we were dreading the void in F1 that Michael Schumacher would supposedly leave when he retires. Looking at it now, it seems almost scary that a seven-time world champion can disappear and his absence pass almost unnoticed.

That said, nobody imagined that the first season of the post-Michael era would be anywhere near as eventful as 2007 has been. With most people's attention having been diverted towards record-breaking rookies, intra-team fighting and spy scandals, the expected wave of books to mark Schumacher's retirement has not eventuated. Just one has made its way to autosport.com's gleaming headquarters - but happily, it's a rather good one.

James Allen is better known to most F1 fans as a voice on the TV than as an author, although he did have the distinction of putting his name to what was, at the time, probably the best book anyone had written about Michael Schumacher - 1999's Quest for Redemption.

On that occasion, Allen used the events of Jerez 1997 as a starting point to explore the contrast between Schumacher's talent and his judgement. It was not an easy task, particularly given the way that Michael tended to polarise people back then, but one that put the German and his career into perspective better than any of the other millions of words that have been written about him were able to.

The Edge of Greatness runs to a similar theme, only now Allen has the advantage of being able to examine Schumacher's career in its entirety rather than as a work in progress.

Like last time, he starts with a moment that darkened Schumacher's reputation - in this case, qualifying at Monaco in 2006 - and from there attempts to build an understanding of what drove a man of such ability to overstep the mark so dramatically.

It is unerringly fair in its assessment - Allen makes full use of his connections within the paddock to draw upon a wide range of opinions, and those who fought in Schumacher's corner are given equal weight to those who fought against him. David Coulthard and Mark Webber in particular are astonishingly candid in sharing their thoughts regarding Schumacher's methods, whether they be on the track, in the drivers' briefing room, or in private.

One of the more striking remarks, however, comes from Michael himself. Often dismissed as cold or robotic for his insistence upon keeping his emotions in check, Schumacher explained himself thus:

"Mika [Hakkinen] showed some humanity [at Monza in 1999, when cameras caught him crying after he spun and retired while leading], and what did the journalists do? They screwed him for it.

"So what should you do? Well, you should try to keep a balance and that way you don't show everything you are feeling to the outside world, because if you do it's used against you in a bad way.

"So you do a professional job and that sometimes means you're not really doing what is human, what is natural. You protect yourself, and all of us are doing that, I think, to some degree." (p. 148).

Allen told me recently that he thinks this book is better than the last one, and while it's exactly what you'd expect an author to say about their latest work, I'm inclined to agree with him.

Being neither a hatchet job nor a hagiography, it has the capacity to appeal regardless of whether you own a Ferrari cap or not, and depth of research and quality of Allen's analysis has allowed him to come close to answering the many unresolved questions about one of the most intriguing figures to have appeared in any sport over the last 30 years.

MINI-REVIEW:

LEWIS HAMILTON: THE STORY SO FAR
By Gareth Rogers; Published by Tempus Publishing.

This was the first of what I imagine will be about two billion Lewis Hamilton books to find its way into my hands, and I hope and pray that all the others are better than this one.

Things get off to a rather shaky start when Rogers mis-spells Gary Paffett's name in the second paragraph, and over the 190 remaining pages the book never recovers from the stumble.

The publisher's mad rush to have the first Lewis title on the shelf has also backfired rather dramatically - with the tale ending somewhere around Spa, the story is completely unresolved and already feels badly dated. It's never good when you have a better idea of what happens next than the author does.

If vast swags of press release quotes interspersed with google search results and sugary hero-worship are your thing, then this might be up your alley. But otherwise, I'd suggest that Hamilton fans wait for something a little more substantial.

After all, it's not like you won't be spoiled for choice.

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- The Autosport.com Team

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