THE RACE TO THE FUTURE

A transcontinental competition becomes a vehicle to explore a broader story.

Even from the distance of more than a century, the 1907 automobile race from Peking to Paris seems not only eccentric, but positively harebrained. St. Clair, the author of The Golden Thread and The Secret Lives of Color, plunges into the task of narrating the tale with enthusiasm, discovering new primary sources and finding fresh perspectives. The incredible length of the race gives the author the chance to explore the sociopolitical issues of the time, as the Chinese and Russian empires tottered and new technologies gathered pace. Sponsored by the French newspaper Le Matin, the race garnered worldwide attention, thanks largely to the dispatches sent from the race participants. In fact, the route was designed to intersect with telegraph stations. Five vehicles started the race; amazingly, four finished. The fifth, while generously classed as an automobile by the race organizers, was more like a three-wheeled motorcycle; it sputtered out in “the parched vastness” of the Gobi Desert. The roads across China and Russia were primitive or even nonexistent. Supplies of gas and food were pre-positioned at various locations, but some of the participants could not locate them. Sometimes, the racers helped each other through scrapes and breakdowns, and sometimes the spirit of unscrupulous competition prevailed. St. Clair prunes away the mythology and nationalistic propaganda that has grown up around the race, on the basis that the real story does not need embellishment. It is entirely the right approach, and the book will appeal not only to car and sports aficionados, but to general readers interested in how the automobile, global communications, and media marketing combined to become the defining traits of the modern world.

St. Clair is an affectionate, informed narrator, placing personal portraits within the larger context of the era.