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The Race to the Future - Kassia St. Clair

The Race to the Future

8,000 Miles to Paris - The Adventure That Accelerated the Twentieth Century
Buch | Softcover
384 Seiten
2026
Liveright Publishing Corporation (Verlag)
978-1-324-09673-3 (ISBN)
CHF 26,15 inkl. MwSt
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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.

Kassia St. Clair specializes in telling gripping stories about the overlooked and the everyday. She has written about history and culture for publications including the Washington Post, Economist, and Elle. The author of The Golden Thread and The Secret Lives of Color, she lives in London.

Erscheint lt. Verlag 21.7.2026
Zusatzinfo 30 black-and-white illustrations
Verlagsort London
Sprache englisch
Maße 140 x 210 mm
Themenwelt Sachbuch/Ratgeber Natur / Technik Fahrzeuge / Flugzeuge / Schiffe
Sachbuch/Ratgeber Sport Motor- / Rad- / Flugsport
Geisteswissenschaften Geschichte Allgemeine Geschichte
ISBN-10 1-324-09673-X / 132409673X
ISBN-13 978-1-324-09673-3 / 9781324096733
Zustand Neuware
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