Bugatti Queen : In Search of a French Racing Legend

New York: Random House, 2004. Fine condition in a bright and beautiful Fine dust jacket. NO chips. NO tears. NO creases. NO rubbing. NOT price clipped ($24.95). A clean, tight copy. Sharp corners. NO owner's name or bookplate. NO remainder mark. "First U.S. Edition" is so stated, with complete number row (246897531) on the copyright page. Illustrated with a few documents and many old photographs. Bound in the original cream-color boards with a green spine, lettered in shiny metallic light blue. From the Dust Jacket: "Transcending her provincial background, Hellé Nice, born Hélène Delangle, made her way into the Parisian demimonde of the 1920s as a nude model, ballerina, and cabaret dancer. But it was on the racetrack, thrilled by the heady mix of machinery and speed, that Nice would realize her destiny, becoming the 'fastest woman in the world.' Catching the attention of the formidable Ettore Bugatti, designer of the world's most desirable cars, Nice gained admission to the exclusive club of male drivers. Her readiness to pose for the camera with seductively half-closed eyes and a radiant smile, coupled with her willingness to risk her life for a record or a win, made Nice an irresistible commodity for Bugatti's marque. Impenitently promiscuous, her many lovers ranged from engineers and mechanics to aristocrats of the racing world such as Baron Philippe de Rothschild and Count Bruno d'Harcourt. Hellé Nice placed in numerous grand prix, was the only woman to drive the treacherous American dirt tracks and speedbowls in the 1930s, and set new land-speed records -- until a notorious accident in Brazil nearly ended her racing career. Her comeback impeded by the war, she lived out the Occupation in the South of France. In 1949, after being mysteriously denounced by a hostile fellow driver as a Gestapo agent, she was written out of racing history. Drawn from a remarkable cache of previously unseen papers, Miranda Seymour's BUGATTI QUEEN sheds new light on both the perilous world of international racing and life in Occupied France. 'Even if you have never thrilled to the drone of powerful cars jockeying for position on a racetrack,' writes London's LITERARY REVIEW, 'Miranda Seymour's biography of the daring female driver Hellé Nice will have you riveted to your seat.'". First Printing of the First U.S. Edition. Hardcover. Fine condition/Fine dust jacket. 8vo. (xxiv), 323pp.