individual sports

I'm not a huge Steve McQueen fan but love his LeMans film. I've watched it loads of times and every time I'm more hooked. I've just finished reading the book and looking forward to watching the film again as I know the experience will be even better. The information about the filming and McQueen himself shows the passion and desire for realism with which it was made. It took me a while to get round to getting the book but as a huge fan of the film I'm really glad I bought it.

OK, I was half way to enjoying this book before I opened the cover...

1) I'm a big motorsports and Le Mans fan, having been fortunate enough to attend the 1999 and 2001 races so far.

2) I loved the film Le Mans.

But the book certainly got me through the other 50%...

What you get in this book is a fabulous scene setting of the history and significance of '24 Heures Du Mans', which is critical to show the importance of the event to Steve McQueen when he was preparing for and making the film - this was definitely a labour of love.

Also there is a brief but by no means lightweight biography of the man himself, again helping to build up an image of the actual person who was making the movie.

Then, in meticulous detail, you get the story of the build up, preparation and filming of 'Le Mans', with plenty of interesting anecdotes and events, particularly on how the fantastic crash sequences were filmed.

In my opinion you will enjoy this book if any of the below apply:

You are a motorsport fan with an interest in the history of the sport.

You are a Steve McQueen fan.

You enjoyed the movie and want to know how it was made.

If you fit into two or all three categories you will definitely be on to a winner!

I'm giving this book five stars, not because it's perfect or couldn't have been much better, but because I'm very happy I bought it. One of the auto magazines had a review that said "a horrid title for a great book" (as close as I can remember). I agree with both. The title is childish and unfortunate, and probably will turn off people who would have bought the book otherwise. That's a shame. The book could have been even better if it didn't use up a lot pages on the history of the LeMans race, and about the various teams competing in the race the year the movie was made. The authors seem to have thought they needed to "set the stage" for people not familiar with the event. But I think the people who will want to buy this book are already familiar with the event as well as the movie. Some of those pages could have been spent on even more detail about the making of the movie -- that's how the book could have been better. But I really enjoyed reading the book as it is, so what might have been is academic.

If you're the kind of person who's watched the movie multiple times, you will like this book. On the other hand, if you're the kind of person who thought the movie was lousy, you don't want to buy this book. You know who you are. If you liked the movie, but were put off by this books title, my advice is to ignore the title and buy the book anyway. (About 300 pages into the book I finally found out that the title wasn't just plucked out of some marketing idiot's nether regions. A fellow writing a proposal to do a documentary about the making of the movie used that bit of purple prose as his punchline in an attempt to make it sound sensational. But it's still an unfortunate title.)