A Little Bit Sideways

Spend a tumultuous week behind the scenes with Kenny Wallace and the Square D team as their independently funded team fights to compete with the best of the best in the 1990s, the golden era of NASCAR racing. This rambunctious tour takes you into the driver's seat, the cocktail parties, the race shop, the broadcast booth, and beyond, providing a look at the sport during the height of NASCAR popularity.

As Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt, Dale Jarrett and other legends fight for the championship, Kenny Wallace and the Square D team's battles to qualify and stay relevant in an era when a spot in Sunday's show was hotly contested and not guranteed. Author Scott Huler spent months with the team so he could chronicle how stock car racing works through the window of the 1997 races at Martinsville and Charlotte Motor Speedway.

The result is a dramatic read that offers insight on the inner workings of NASCAR team, from tire and gas strategy to engineering, car set up, and the fine points of a fabulous pit stop. Throughout the book, the author captures Wallace's fiery discourse and passionate personality, and takes the reader into all corners of NASCAR racing, from tech inspections and RVs in the infield to cocktail parties and banging fenders on the track.

In A Little Bit Sideways, author Scott Huler goes over the wall and does for NASCAR what Roger Angell did for baseball, David Foster Wallace did for tennis, and Hunter S. Thompson did for the Kentucky Derby-capture the soul of the sport with gritty, honest reporting of its colorful characters and distinctive landscapes.