The Hardest, Longest Race - by Eric Moskowitz (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

From Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Eric Moskowitz comes the riveting story of the first true coast-to-coast automobile race in U.S. history, a fast-paced tale of the gritty and determined drivers who braved hostile terrain, mechanical failure, and, shockingly, sabotage, to take home the gold.

In 1909, America was home to 253 automakers, a landscape of visionaries, schemers, and would-be barons of the new century. But when playboy millionaire M. Robert Guggenheim announced an audacious "Ocean to Ocean" contest from New York City to the Seattle World's Fair, only three companies were brassy enough to show up at the starting line: Acme, Ford, and Shawmut.

Oddsmakers favored the Acme and Itala, a pricy import also joining the race, while dismissing the pint-sized Ford -- a homely little number called the Model T-- and the long-shot Shawmut, struggling to survive after a factory fire. In fact, many didn't believe any of the cars would reach Seattle at all, as they would need to forge a 4,106-mile course of mountain ranges, mud bogs, washed-out wagon bridges, and harrowing canyon trails, long before the era of asphalt highways, seatbelts, and service stations.

But Henry Ford was intent on proving that the Model T could go the distance and beat out the muscular luxury cars---and he didn't plan to leave it to chance. Indeed, a little over three weeks after the race began, a Ford crossed the line hours ahead of the Shawmut.

Except that victory was a fraud.

The Hardest, Longest Race is a colorful tale of ambition and subterfuge, but it is also a love letter to America at the turn of the Twentieth Century. As a seeming people's champion--a car for the masses--traverses the vast nation, Moskowitz brings to vivid life the diverse populace and landscape that it would soon transform.

Review Quotes

"Who doesn't love a long-distance automobile race? They've got everything: fearless drivers, big ambitions, unexpected hijinks, tests of mechanical skill, and the perilous, but thrilling open road. With razor-sharp prose and a narrative that leaps forward from the start, Moskowitz takes readers to the summer of 1909, when the newly minted Ford Model T takes on all comers in America's first coast-to-coast contest. It's pedal-to-the-metal to the chequered finish." --Neal Bascomb, New York Times bestselling author of Faster and The Winter Fortress

"Eric Moskowitz takes us back to America at the turn of the 20th century in this brilliant and comprehensively-researched Model T-dominated roll from New York to Seattle. In the days before night-driving, a cross country "motor car" race across America captured our nation's attention. Informative and wildly entertaining, The Hardest, Longest Race is a worthy homage to a contest that changed the way we travel." --Dan Shaughnessy, New York Times bestselling author of Francona and Wish It Lasted Forever: Life with the Larry Bird Celtics

"Climb in, buckle up (if only there were seatbelts), and be transported to the dawn of the automotive age. The Hardest, Longest Race is a rollicking tale of adventure and ambition, filled with heroic characters--and a few villains--as well as more twists and turns than the first roads linking one coast to another. Eric Moskowitz is a masterful reporter who's transformed awe-inspiring research into a gripping portrait of the people and preoccupations that reshaped the world." --Mitchell Zuckoff, New York Times bestselling author of Lost in Shangri-La and 13 Hours

"A compelling story of American ingenuity, ambition, deception, and grit at the dawn of the age of the automobile. In The Hardest, Longest Race, you will feel the wind in your hair, the dust in your teeth, and the crazy dreams of wild men in a time when there were no roads." -- Keith O'Brien, New York Times bestselling author of Charlie Hustle and Fly Girls

"Eric Moskowitz has written a rough-and-tumble journey through mud and betrayal that isn't over even when it's over. With The Hardest, Longest Race, Moskowitz narrates a four-thousand-mile cross-country contest meant to demonstrate the bright future of automobiles but which instead pitted humans in all their ingenuity and deviousness against one another, with corporate power in the twentieth century in the balance. Gripping and relentless." --Andrea Pitzer, bestselling author of Icebound: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World

"A rollicking, action-packed, exquisitely crafted engine of narrative nonfiction. Eric Moskowitz rescues from the past a seminal but forgotten cross-country race, yet he does so much more. He shows us the nation being transformed, for good and bad, at the dawn of intertwined eras of the automobile and public relations. What a fresh, illuminating way to see America." --Neil Swidey, bestselling author of Trapped Under the Sea and The Assist

"Moskowitz has given us a new way to glimpse America in the first years of the Twentieth Century. In 'you-are-there' fashion, he brings Henry Ford--to name just one of the players in his 4,100-mile canvas--wickedly to life." --Paul Hendrickson, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and author of Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost

"A bold and brawny story of American grit, bravado and B.S. Featuring 4,000 miles of mud, mountains, and sabotage, it's packed with vivid strivers and schemers straight out of Jack London or John Steinbeck. A thrilling tale of ambition and fraud at the dawn of automobile age - a humble precursor to the Fast and the Furious - it's also the origin story of Ford, built atop the quirky little Model T that "won" this grueling 1909 contest and launched an empire." --Neal Thompson, New York Times bestselling author of Driving with the Devil: Southern Moonshine, Detroit Wheels, and the Birth of NASCAR

"In a story with as many twists and turns as the route itself, not all is what it seems, as Eric Moskowitz reveals in this high-powered and absorbing story." --Michael Kranish, New York Times bestselling author of The World's Fastest Man: The Extraordinary Life of Cyclist Major Taylor, America's First Black Sports Hero

"What a trip! By all rights, if justice had been done, Americans might well have been driving Shawmuts for 100 years, not Fords, and Boston would be the automotive capital of the world. But Henry Ford, like future showmen and tycoons, knew the value of messaging. By cheating, and then claiming victory before the final outcome, all the glory was his. This is the story of America, beautifully told." --Peter S. Canellos, author of The Great Dissenter: The Story of John Marshall Harlan, America's Judicial Hero

"Just when you think you know all there is to know about Henry Ford and the Model T, Eric Moskowitz comes along with a surprising and highly entertaining gem. The story of an early 20th century cross-country race full of cheating, intrigue and mayhem, The Hardest, Longest Race has it all, and in the hands of an elite storyteller and journalist, you feel like you've been whisked back to the starting line in 1909!" --Doug Most, author of Launching Liberty, The Race Underground, and Always in Our Hearts

About the Author

ERIC MOSKOWITZ spent 12 years at The Boston Globe, where he covered transportation and was part of the team that received the Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing. He has written for The Atlantic and The New York Times, and his work has appeared in The Best American Sports Writing and The Best American Newspaper Narratives anthologies. He studied American history at the University of Pennsylvania and lives near Boston with his wife and children.