Steve Purdy’s guest, Burt Levy, from Chicago, also taught at GingerMan, and is a multi-talented fellow. Burt is a journalist, author and teacher, who has spent most of his life around racing, copping rides (that’s jargon for driving) in some fabulous cars, mostly belonging to others. Beginning in the 1990s, he dove head first into producing novels about the early years of sports car racing set in the 1950s.
Beginning with The Last Open Road, the intricate and colorful stories are told by a simple garage mechanic, Buddy Palumbo, who gets deeply caught up in the world of racing. The rich characters he develops to tell these stories, his lively and colloquial style, plus the thoroughly researched history of the major races of the day, make these books hard to put down. There are now five books in the series, and there will soon be a sixth. Take a look at Burt’s work: www.lastopenroad.com.
