What is it about an engine roaring into life that makes grown men go weak at the knees?--find out in this light-hearted look at one man's overwhelming obsession with machines This is a book about machines and the men who love them. Some of these men are quite odd. Having always been a mechanophobe himself, living in the slow lane, Dan Kieran is on a mission to discover the allure of machines and man's need for speed. Follow Dan as he climbs aboard a penny-farthing for a jaunt around west London, drives a steam train through the "alps," joins the pit lane crew of Mitsubishi for the Britcar 24-hour race at Silverstone, discovers the link between Lawrence of Arabia and the "wall of death," meets tank collectors and the men behind "digger ballet," learns to fly in the shadow of Douglas Bader, and, along the way, wrestles with Aristotle, Jeremy Clarkson, Plato, Hunter S. Thompson, and, mostly, himself.