-
Bunion Derby
- The 1928 Footrace Across America
- Narrated by: Andrew L. Barnes
- Length: 6 hrs and 36 mins
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Publisher's summary
On March 4, 1928, 199 men lined up in Los Angeles, California, to participate in a 3,400-mile transcontinental footrace to New York City. The Bunion Derby, as the press dubbed the event, was the brainchild of sports promoter Charles C. Pyle. He promised a $25,000 grand prize and claimed the competition would immortalize US Route 66, a 2,400-mile road, mostly unpaved, that subjected the runners to mountains, deserts, mud, and sandstorms, from Los Angeles to Chicago.
The runners represented all walks of American life, from immigrants to millionaires, with a peppering of star international athletes, included by Pyle for publicity purposes. For 84 days, the men participated in this part-footrace, part-Hollywood production, which incorporated a road show featuring football legend Red Grange, food concessions, vaudeville acts, sideshows, a portable radio station, and the world's largest coffeepot, sponsored by Maxwell House, serving 90 gallons of coffee a day.
Drawn by hopes for a better future and dreams of fame, fortune, and glory, the bunioneers embarked on an exhaustive and grueling journey that would challenge their physical and psychological endurance to the fullest, while Pyle struggled to keep his cross-country road show afloat.
The book is published by University of New Mexico Press.
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- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 10 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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In the tradition of Uzodinma Iweala's Beasts of No Nation by way of Christopher McDougall's Born to Run, this is the inspirational true story of the Ugandan boy soldier who became a world-renowned runner, then found his calling as director of a world-renowned African children's charity.
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Determination of an individual
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Road to Valor
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- By: Aili McConnon, Andres McConnon
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Based on nearly 10 years of research in Italy, France, and Israel, including interviews with Gino Bartali's family, former teammates, a Holocaust survivor Bartali saved, and many others, Road to Valor is the first book ever written about the Italian cycling legend in English and the only book written in any language to fully explore the scope of Bartali's wartime work. An epic tale of courage, comeback, and redemption, it is the untold story of one of the greatest athletes of the 20th century.
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Hollywood .... look this story !!!
- By Fabiano on 04-03-19
By: Aili McConnon, and others
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Rome 1960
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- By: David Maraniss
- Narrated by: David Maraniss
- Length: 5 hrs and 41 mins
- Abridged
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The athletes competing in the 1960 Rome Olympics included some of the most honored in Olympic history: decathlete Rafer Johnson, sprinter Wilma Rudolph, Ethiopian marathoner Abebe Bikila, and Louisville boxer Cassius Clay, who at 18 seized the world stage for the first time, four years before he became Muhammad Ali.
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Very Good Book
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By: David Maraniss
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Hell on Two Wheels
- By: Amy Snyder
- Narrated by: Sheila Stasack
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Three-time Ironman finisher Amy Snyder takes the wraps off the best kept secret in the sports world, the Race Across America (RAAM), a bicycle race like no other. Unlike its famous cousin the Tour de France, RAAM is much crazier, more gothic, and even savage: Once the gun goes off the clock doesn't stop, and the first rider to complete the prescribed 3,000-mile route is the victor. In Hell on Two Wheels, Snyder follows a group of athletes before, during, and after the 2009 RAAM.
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A documentary of the toughest bike race
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Two Hours
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- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Two hours to cover 26 miles and 385 yards. Its running's Everest, a feat once seen as impossible for the human body. Now we can glimpse the mountaintop. The sub-two-hour marathon requires an exceptional feat of speed, mental strength, and endurance. The pioneer will have to endure more, live braver, plan better, and be luckier than any who has run before. Ed Caesar takes us into the world of elite runners: the greatest marathoners on Earth.
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I liked it!
- By Amazon Customer on 05-07-16
By: Ed Caesar
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The Three-Year Swim Club
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- By: Julie Checkoway
- Narrated by: Alex Chadwick
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1937, a schoolteacher on the island of Maui challenged a group of poverty-stricken sugar plantation kids to swim upstream against the current of their circumstance. The goal? To become Olympians. They faced seemingly insurmountable obstacles. The children were Japanese-American, were malnourished and barefoot, and had no pool; they trained in the filthy irrigation ditches that snaked down from the mountains into the sugarcane fields.
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Great story but the Hawaiian words get slaughtered
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By: Julie Checkoway
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Go Like Hell
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- By: A. J. Baime
- Narrated by: Jones Allen
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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By the early 1960s, Ford Motor Company, built to bring automobile transportation to the masses, was falling behind. Baby boomers were taking to the roads in droves, looking for speed not safety, style not comfort, and Ford didn’t offer what these young drivers wanted. Meanwhile, Enzo Ferrari lorded over the European racing scene, crafting beautiful, fast sports cars that epitomized style.
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Goldern age of racing
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By: A. J. Baime
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Seabiscuit
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- Length: 13 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Seabiscuit was one of the most electrifying and popular attractions in sports history and the single biggest newsmaker in the world in 1938, receiving more coverage than FDR, Hitler, or Mussolini. But his success was a surprise to the racing establishment, which had written off the crooked-legged racehorse with the sad tail.
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See you in the winner's circle
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Triumph
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- Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1936, against a backdrop of swastikas flying and storm troopers looming, an African-American son of sharecroppers set three world records and won an unprecedented four gold medals, single-handedly crushing Hitler's myth of Aryan supremacy. The story of Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics Games is that of a high-profile athlete giving a performance that transcends sports. But it is also the intimate and complex tale of the courage of one remarkable man.
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race headwinds
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By: Jeremy Schaap
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Iron War
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- By: Matt Fitzgerald
- Narrated by: Seth Michael Donsky
- Length: 13 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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The 1989 Ironman World Championship was the greatest race ever in endurance sports. In a spectacular duel that became known as the Iron War, the world's two strongest athletes raced side by side at world-record pace for a grueling 139 miles. Driven by one of the fiercest rivalries in triathlon, Dave Scott and Mark Allen raced shoulder to shoulder through Ironman’s 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike race, and 26.2-mile marathon. After 8 punishing hours, both men would demolish the previous record - and cross the finish line a mere 58 seconds apart.
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Fine Story....But the Narration!!!!
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By: Matt Fitzgerald
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Boom Town
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- By: Sam Anderson
- Narrated by: Sam Anderson
- Length: 14 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Oklahoma City was born from chaos. It was founded in a bizarre but momentous "Land Run" in 1889, when thousands of people lined up along the borders of Oklahoma Territory and rushed in at noon to stake their claims. Since then, it has been a city torn between the wild energy that drives its outsize ambitions and the forces of order that seek sustainable progress.
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OKC’s Past & Present Weaved Together
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King and Queen of Malibu
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- By: David K. Randall
- Narrated by: Eric Summerer
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Over a half century, Malibu went from an untamed ranch in the middle of nowhere to a paradise seeded with movie stars. Behind its transformation is the love story of Frederick and May Rindge. He was a Harvard-trained confidant of presidents; she grew up on a hardscrabble Midwestern farm; yet their unlikely bond would shape history.
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Detailed and interesting
- By SuperLuckyCat on 08-04-24
By: David K. Randall
What listeners say about Bunion Derby
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Narda Pierce
- 11-03-17
A Corridor of History
Bunion Derby is a wonderful look back through time at a slice of America, with a new Route 66 and the unique energy of the 1920's. Individual aspirations and striving play out along a foot race course that takes the individyal runners through a natural landscape of mountains and deserts and a social landscape of racism and class divides.
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- Rebecca Anne Banks
- 06-09-15
The Bunion Derby, the life and times . . .
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The Bunion Derby, the life and times, American history alive.
Byline: The Book Reviewer
Title of Book: The Bunion Derby
Author: Charles B. Kastner
Narrator: Andrew L. Barnes
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Date of Publication: 2015
Time: 6 hours and 36 minutes
“99 bottles of beer on the wall,
99 bottles of beer,
and if one of those bottles should happen to fall,
98 bottles of beer on the wall . . . “
- Drinking Song
The Bunion Derby, a timepiece of American history, tells the story of a footrace from San Francisco to New York City along Route 66 in 1928. But this was no ordinary footrace, advertising the newly built across-America roadway, the event would take 84 days, covering 3,400 miles “through extreme and varied terrain” including deserts, windstorms, mountains, rain and mud on a road that was largely hardbake and only paved in rare spots, for a grand prize of $25,000 ($3 - $4 million in todays monies). The event was an extravaganza, bigger than any Hollywood Production with a travelling carnival, convoy of cars and busses with 2 huge 24,000 lbs. busses for journalists and the organizers, a cast of sports stars, the promotion of products (the Maxwell House coffee company created the world's largest coffee pot serving 90 gallons of coffee a day, and paid $5,000 for the promotion), and a huge tent city was put up and taken down every day. A chronology of athletes, time and place, a retelling of each day includes a description of countryside and towns, who was ailing, who won that day and how many men were still in the race. The race began with 199 athletes, every day some of the racers would drop out, one got a note from his wife to get home, most had ailments (blisters, infections, shin splints) and fatigue. Each runner was clocked everyday, so the winner was based on the one who completed the entire race in the less time.
As “The Bunion Derby” rolled into town, the townsfolk dropped monies on Charles C. Pyle’s spectacular carnival event. Mr. Pyle, the organizer of what was officially known as “First Annual Transcontinental Footrace”, a businessman, running theater companies, hired famous football player, Red Grange with the Chicago Bears as his assistant. Free food and board was advertised for the racers and often cars were parked 3 and 4 abreast along the route with crowds of onlookers. Attracting runners and hopefuls from all over North America, Europe and the world, a handful were famous or semi-famous, Eddie Gardener “the Sheik of Seattle” (a Black American runner), Sammy Robinson “Smiling Sammy” (a Black professional boxer), Harland Johnson (a Black movie actor, boxer), Lucien Frost (an actor looking for publicity to revive his career), Patrick DeBar (boxer), Mike Kelly (boxer), Johnny Salo (runner born in Finland), Willy Schurer (professional runner from Finland), Peter Gavuzzi (runner from England), Harry Gunn (the millionaire’s son) and the “shadow runners”, the poor, farmers and a few American Indians and Blacks. The lucky few had assistants, people in a car or motor bike with food and drink, change of sneakers and clothing, linement and grease for sunburn. The entire country, if not the world, was entranced as local newspapers and radio interviewed contenders and locals, discussing strategy and picking their favourites, "who would win a runner or a walker?" "would anyone even finish such a grueling long distance race?"
An excellent third person narrative, the writing is pared in, and eloquent, telling the truth about the conditions of the foot race through both the white and the Black press. Narrated in the deep voice of Andrew L. Barnes in a Southern States accent, the audiobook captivates and if you close your eyes, you can be transported back in history. The year was 1928, the golden years of America at their zenith, just before the stock market crash of 1929. Cars had just been invented and 1 in 5 people owned one causing the mass production of roadways. Radio, another new invention, captured the public’s imagination as people in rural and the new citystate America, would gather around and listen to their favourite songs and radio shows.
The runners with monies, a trainer or a crew that followed them along the route seemed to fare better than the lone runners. There was a medical team and people with food that aided the runners and a long list of afflictions, blisters, throat infections, cramps, toothache . . . and the chef quit near the beginning of the run so Charlie Pyle had to give the men $1.50 per day food ration. Long distance runners consume huge amounts of food and some were not able to get the nutrition they needed. Those that could afford to staid in local hotels, the rest staid in a huge tent with cots, but it became evident early on that the organizers had forgotten they would need laundry done and this made for very uncomfortable conditions with dirty sheets and cots. The carnival people were not paid very well and were accused of stealing and the “coochi” girls were sometimes of questionable character. Usually, "the bunion derby" was welcomed with open arms, however, the mayor of Albuqerque had heard the stories and would not allow Charlie Pyle’s carnival inside city limits. In Texas the crowds were abominable to the Black athletes, threatening them, the international athletes were embarrassed and would not segregate the Black runners. Mr. Pyle was beset by financial problems and litigation, making people wonder if the winners would even be paid. By Day 74, there were 55 men and 10 days to go to reach New York, New York, with the frontrunners Johnny Salo, Andy Payne, Philip Granville, Mike Joyce, Eddie Gardener amongst others, all vying for position, 10 of the remaining 55 runners, took honours. Andy Payne, a little known part Cherokee Indian farmer from Oklahoma won the $25,000 first prize and used his winnings to pay off the mortgage on his family’s farm. The final ceremony takes place at Madison Square Gardens, with only about 400 onlookers, (most of the huge crowds had seen the racers for free outside the arena and would not pay the door tab), the winners are awarded pink cheques. After the ceremony the remaining runners looked up Charlie Pyle for the return of their $100 entrance fee, as promised, to get back home.
The stories surrounding the people of “The Bunion Derby” and the camaraderie and rivalry of the men, their families and the communities they ran through goes down in American history. History within history, all the players, their lives and times. The Bunion Derby by Charles B. Kastner, Narrated by Andrew L. Barnes.
Genre: AudioBooks, History, Black Issues, NonFiction, Sports
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- Michael
- 08-14-20
A transcontinental like no other!!
I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.
What an AMAZING competition - a 1920’s foot race across America with a prize purse of $25,000! An incredible human accomplishment - the story made me wonder if it’s ever been done since!
About 125 men - black and white - entered the race. Some professional runners while others were novices. Sadly prejudice and bigotry towards the black “bunyoneers” - as all participants were called - is part of the story.
This human drama is worth learning about because of its grand goal by the promoter who organized the event as well logistics and city stops entertainment.
The writing has an enjoyable pace and the vocal performance was perfect for the story.
Clearly a 5-star effort on all counts!
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- Tim Hannon
- 02-05-20
A great recounting of an unbelievable competition
When I first heard about the Bunion Derby, a foot race from LA to NYC, held in 1928, I couldn't believe that such a demanding endeavor was planned, yet alone attracted 200 participants. This book recounts the innumerable challenges faced by racers along the course. Long stretches of the road were dirt. They ran across a desert, over a mountain pass, across the plains and then along busy roads on their way across the country. A handful of African Americans took on the challenge and literally risked their lives as they ran through parts of the Jim Crow South. This book is impeccably researched and well written.
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- Anon E Mouse
- 06-04-15
Disappointing!
I read about this book before the audio version was available, and was very pleased that Audible responded to my request to publish an audio version (Thank you!!).
Since I've completed 26 marathons and four 50k's (who's counting!), I expected to love this story.
There's no doubt that what these men did is beyond incredible. Even with my marathon experience, I wouldn't have made it past the first day.
But, the character development is almost completely missing. One would think that the listener would "get to know" at least a few of the characters, some likeable, some not. But I didn't develop feelings for any of the participants or the organizers. They were all just "blah" (ok, amazing but blah).
The narration was also incredibly drab. The reader is talented, but there was absolutely no emotion that came through.
If I couldn't wait for this story to end, I can't imagine that non-runners would even make it halfway.
Invest your time elsewhere, e.g., Born to Run.
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