Read The Race to the Future: 8,000 Miles to Paris―The Adventure That Accelerated the Twentieth Century By Kassia St. Clair Full Books Online in HD Quality

The rise of the automobile as told through its Rubicon moment—a sensational, high-risk race across two continents on the verge of revolution.

The racers—an Italian prince and his chauffeur, a French racing driver, a con man, and several rival journalists—battle over steep inclines, through narrow mountain passages, and across the arid Gobi Desert. Competitors endure torrential rain and choking dust. There are barely any roads, and petrol is almost impossible to find. A global audience of millions follows each twist and turn, devouring reports telegraphed from the course.

More than its many adventures, the Peking-to-Paris Motor Challenge took place on the precipice of a new world. As the twentieth century dawned, imperial regimes in China and Russia were crumbling, paving the way for the rise of communist ones. The electric telegraph was rapidly transforming modern communication, and with it, the news media, commerce, and politics. Suspended between the old and the new, the Peking-to-Paris, as best-selling historian Kassia St. Clair writes, became a critical tipping point.

A gripping, immersive narrative of the race, The Race to the Future sets the drivers’ derring-do (and occasional cheating) against the backdrop of a larger geopolitical and technological race to the future. Interweaving events from the fall of the Qing dynasty to the departure of the horse economy and the rise of gendered marketing, St. Clair shows how the Peking-to-Paris provided an impetus for profound social, cultural, and industrial change, while masterfully capturing the mounting tensions between nations and empires—all building up to the cataclysmic event that changed everything: the First World War.

“Consistently mind-boggling, often funny, and occasionally hair-raising” (Philip Ball), The Race to the Future is the incredible true story of the quest against the odds that propelled us along the road to modernity.

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

The Race to the Future: 8,000 Miles to Paris―The Adventure That Accelerated the Twentieth Century

The Race to the Future: 8,000 Miles to Paris―The Adventure That Accelerated the Twentieth Century

More Books

Skies of Thunder: The Deadly World War II Mission Over the Roof of the World

Caroline Alexander

The Castaway's War: One Man's Battle Against Imperial Japan

Stephen Harding

A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon

Kevin Fedarko

Kent State: An American Tragedy

Brian VanDeMark

The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City

Kevin Baker

The Siege: A Six-Day Hostage Crisis and the Daring Special-Forces Operation That Shocked the World

Ben Macintyre

The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum: The Rise and Fall of an American Organized-Crime Boss

Margalit Fox

Taking London: Winston Churchill and the Fight to Save Civilization

Martin Dugard

The Infernal Machine: A True Story of Dynamite, Terror, and the Rise of the Modern Detective

Steven Johnson

Realm of Ice and Sky: Triumph, Tragedy, and History's Greatest Arctic Rescue

Buddy Levy

Oathbreakers: The War of Brothers That Shattered an Empire and Made Medieval Europe

Matthew Gabriele

Ritchie Boy Secrets: How a Force of Immigrants and Refugees Helped Win World War II

Beverley Driver Eddy