Of all the historical drag racing stories that needed to be told in depth, the saga of the fabled rivalry between Tom “The Mongoose” McEwen and Don “The Snake” Prudhomme probably sat on top of the heap. We speak in the past tense because Tom Madigan spills all the beans about the iconic pair in his new book, Snake Vs. Mongoose: How a Rivalry Changed Drag Racing Forever, and it totally rules.
All sides of the story are told. Prudhomme and McEewn are profiled in depths that we’ve never seen or read before. Former executives and employees from Hot Wheels tell about how the deals were struck and just how successful the promotion was, and other racers, journalists, and friends all chime in along the way to share experiences.
The photography in the book is outstanding as well. Hundreds of photos, both black and white and color, adorn the pages and serve as a neat guide to the evolution of the equipment that these men were piloting through their careers, both when they were racing together and when they were independantly competing before and after the Hot Wheels deal.
So many people know the basic story yet know only a little about the players involved in it, but this book takes those slivers of knowledge and turns them into canyons. Madigan did a masterful job of interviewing the people involved with these men and their careers and getting more cool insights and stories than we’ve ever found collected on them in one place before.
So your a drag geek like us that knows the story of the Snake and the Mongoose, do you need this book? Absolutely. Unless you were these with these two men through all of their careers, from start to finish, you don’t know the half of it.
The book goes on sale November first and can be ordered through Motorbooks, Amazon, or your local bookseller.
