I have owned the book since it's original printing and found it to be a good insight to Bruce McLaren the man and the racer. It is kept handy for two paragraphs in the introduction to the original version. I do not know if they are in the reprint.They stand on their own without comment.
"In the dark days that followed it was realized that Bruce, the complete man, had virtually penned his own epitaph in the closing paragraph of his book From the Cockpit, written in 1964. He had put down on paper the grief he felt at the death of his teammate Timmy Mayer, killed in a practice crash in Tasmania, but he had also recorded his justification for going racing and those last few sentences in his book are a fitting beginning for this one:
"The news that he had died instantly was a terrible shock to all of us, but who is to say that he had not seen more, done more and learned more in his few years than many people do in a lifetime? To do something well is so worthwhile that to die trying to do it better cannot be foolhardy. It would be a waste of life to do nothing with one's ability, for I feel that life is measured in achievement, not in years alone."
Many of today's F1 fans don't know where the name for McLaren the team came from and this will give them great insight into the man that founded the team that in many ways still folllows his philosophy.
