The Race to the Future

8000 Miles to Paris – The Adventure That Accelerated the Twentieth Century

By: Kassia St. Clair

Narrated by: Kassia St. Clair

The racers battle over steep inclines, through narrow mountain passages, and across the arid Gobi Desert. Competitors endure torrential rain and choking dust. There are barely any roads, and petrol is almost impossible to find.

More than its many adventures, the Peking-to-Paris Motor Challenge took place on the precipice of a new world. As the twentieth century dawned, imperial regimes in China and Russia were crumbling, paving the way for the rise of communist ones. The electric telegraph was rapidly transforming modern communication, and with it, the news media, commerce, and politics. Suspended between the old and the new, the Peking-to-Paris, as bestselling historian Kassia St. Clair writes, became a critical tipping point.

A gripping, immersive narrative of the race, The Race to the Future sets the drivers' derring-do (and occasional cheating) against the backdrop of a larger geopolitical and technological race to the future. Interweaving events from the fall of the Qing dynasty to the departure of the horse economy and the rise of gendered marketing, St. Clair shows how the Peking-to-Paris provided an impetus for profound social, cultural, and industrial change, while masterfully capturing the mounting tensions between nations and empires-all building up to the cataclysmic event that changed everything: the First World War.

©2023 Kassia St. Clair (P)2024 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Interesting story

I disliked all the collateral commentary that had nothing to do with the race and which seemed like gratuitous filler. For example. Ralph Nader, modern gas v electric, commentary about environmental consequences… all of interest but not within this story which would have flowed better and been more interesting without them.