NASCAR 75th Anniversary Book Review: The Perfect Companion to the Series Milestone

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Whether you're new to NASCAR or a veteran of more nights in the infield than you care to admit, you'll find the book NASCAR 75 Years is a real treat.

The book is an extra meaty 224-page, decade-by-decade look at NASCAR Cup Series history, hitting just about all the the highs (and a few lows) of the series' first 75 years. The book is perfect for the coffee table and comes out on April 11.

Complete with hundreds of images and vignettes—call it a history book, if you wish—this is the perfect conversation-starter or trip down memory lane for anyone who's marveled at Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt, David Pearson, Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson or countless others who have helped turn major-league stock car racing into the No. 1 racing attraction in the U.S.

Some of those featured in the book are personalities you've probably long forgotten about, which is half the fun.

NASCAR 75 Years is chock full of photos from NASCAR's past, beginning with the story behind a meeting in 1947 at the Streamline Hotel in Daytona Beach, Florida, and racing all the way through Joey Logano's 2022 Cup Series championship at Phoenix in November of 2022.

NASCAR 75 Years is written by four members of the media who know their way around a race track and a media center—Autoweek senior motorsports writer Al Pearce, Autoweek contributor Mike Hembree, Alabama-based newspaperman Jimmy Creed and RACER magazine's Kelly Crandall. Each took on different decades in the book.

Pearce has been covering NASCAR since 1969. Appropriately, Pearce tackled the decade of the '70s for the book—the 16th book Pearce has authored or co-authored.

"It can be argued with some certainty that the '70s really got the sport going," Pearce said. "There was the 1979 Daytona 500 on CBS with the big fight at the end, Dale Earnhardt, Richard Petty, the beginning of RJR-Winston's sponsorship in the sport."

Hembree, who has written or co-authored 14 books, covers the 1940s, '50s, '60s and '90s. Creed takes on the '80s, and Crandall chronicles 2000-present.

Put this one on your birthday or holiday wish list. Buy it for the pictures, stay for the captivating stories and the trip down memory lane.