Featured Reviews Lucille's Car Care: Everything You Need to Know from Under the Hood-By America's Most Trusted Mechanic by Lucille Treganowan, Gina Catanzarite (Contributor) This was a great introduction for someone who knows very little about cars. She explains what the major systems of the car are (like the drive train, suspension, etc) and identifies key components (like the radiator and catalitic converter) and explains what they do in simple terms. My only complaint is that as someone who just bought a classic car and wants to really learn to be a weekend mechanic I wanted to know more about certain things and was frustrated by not being able to "double-click" (I'm such a geek!) to get more information about something she had described too generally. She really does explain things in an easy-to-understand and entertaining way and gives a great maintenance plan for the average car owner who wants to save money by doing it themselves or just know what mechanics are talking about so they don't get taken for a ride. Lucille herself is quite inspiring - I'd like to know her! Maybe she'll stop by this site some day if she hasn't already. - Ann the Crewchief Women at the Wheel: 42 Stories of Freedom, Fanbelts and the Lure of the Open Road by Marilyn Root My favorite Christmas present, Marilyn Root presents beautiful, telling black and white photos of women and their cars and trucks and let's them tell their own stories which vary from art car artists to a mack truck driver to a woman just learning to drive in her 40s. A great, inspiring read. - Ann the Crewchief Drive They Said: Poems about Americans and Their Cars, Edited by Kurt Brown. Milkweed Editions, 1994. ISBN 0-915943-90-5, 328 pp, $14.95 paperback. "Some people say Texans think more about wheels than sex but you have to understand the distances involved." --from "Women in Cars" by Martha McFerren in Drive They Said If you are passionate about driving, cars, love, and motion in general--even if you hated poetry in the eighth grade--you may well find yourself hooked by this thoroughly entertaining and soul-satisfying collection. "Some may think....driving an unfit subject for poetry. This anthology is not for them," writes Kurt Brown in the introduction and how right he is. Whatever it is about driving that tends to focus our attention or melt it away, this collection neatly captures those qualities. The subjects of the poems range from grief ("I can grieve anything / driving these two-lane roads," writes Deborah Digges in "Mimosa") to speed ("driving you through Death Valley's venom and thorns in your / lipstick red Spitfire convertible through nothing / but dead sea and occasional towns" writes Beth Houston in "Exodus"), prayer ("Later they got down and prayed / like a lot of folks on I-80 / coming through that pass...." writes Barbara M. Smith in "Interstate 80") to police ("Your speedometer won't stay steady..../You would like to tell him / where he can go shine his leather," writes Peter Sears in "When the Big Blue Light Comes a Whirling up Behind.") Perhaps the most pervasive subject in the book is the freedom availed to us by driving, whether in moving toward something pleasurable, or away from something painful, or just feeling free to think, as Alicia Ostriker writes in "While Driving North: "...when I drive alone / it is the only time / my mind is entirely free...." - Jenny "Small Truck" Van West The Lady Mechanic's Total Car Care for the Clueless : A Manual for Car Owners by Ren Volpe A funny, deceptively simple book written by a female mechanic and auto shop teacher with cartoons geared toward newer car owners. - Heather from Eve's Eye Press

Other Great Reads Women in Cars : Poems by Martha McFerren Confessions of a Fast Woman by Lesley Hazleton Hear Me Roar : Women, Motorcycles, and the Rapture of the Road by Ann Ferrar Driving Me Wild: Nitro-powered Outlaw Culture! by Leah M. Kerr Taking the Wheel : Women and the Coming of the Motor Age by Virginia Scharff An academic but entertaining historical work. Ladies, Start Your Engines by Elinor Nauen The Perfect Vehicle: What It is about Motorcycles by Melissa Holbrook Pierson The Bad Girls' Guide to Open Road by Cameron Tuttle Who else? Have we forgotten your favorite book? Email the editor and let us know!