Drifting started as a niche motorsport among Japanese-American Californians, but has quickly evolved into a full-fledged competitive motorsport involving everyone from kids in the Midwest to a 55-year-old World Rally Championship Driver. This is the first how-to book to focus on both how to properly prepare a car to compete in drifting events, and how to drive it effectively in those events.Written by one of the original American drifters, it expertly covers car preparation, driving techniques, competition rules, and much more. Drawing on an extensive storehouse of knowledge and using full-color photography, diagrams, and charts to support his text, Calvin Wan explains the theories behind every aspect of the sport. For those who want to do it, those who like to watch, and those who simply seek to understand, this is the quintessential guide to drifting.

Includes, beginning Sept. 15, 1954 (and on the 15th of each month, Sept.-May) a special section: School library journal, ISSN 0000-0035, (called Junior libraries, 1954-May 1961). Also issued separately.

Dreamed up by drivers trying to outdo each other on the mountain passes of Japan, the art of the sideways descent of a switchback-what Wired described as "the fishtailing ballet of burning rubber called drifting"-has made it to the United States in a big way. What began as a new kind of daredevil driving among teens has, over two decades, become a sanctioned sport, making its way across the Pacific through video games and magazines, anime and the Internet, to take root in California's fertile underground racing culture. Drifting tells the story of drifting from its arrival on the West Coast to its emergence as the hottest form of motorsport in the United States. A dramatic visual record of the sport in America that includes over 400 photos, the book also profiles the people, teams, techniques, web sites, publications, videos, and trends that have made drifting the phenomenon that it is today. For the curious newcomer, author Antonio Alvendia's introduction succinctly explains what drifting is, setting the stage for the thrilling automotive drama that then unfolds. For the veteran drifting fan, this book is the first illustrated book on the latest motorsport to conquer the world.

Ride quality and steering response set many cars apart from one another. As a result, an enormous aftermarket has sprung up to take factory steering and suspension to the next tier. Everything enthusiast or backyard mechanic needs to know about suspension theory, design, modification, tuning, and creating an integrated system for maximum performance is covered in this hands-on guide. The book covers wheels and tires, suspension and steering, shock absorbers, springs, anti-roll bars, suspension bushings, aerodynamics, and setups for high-performance street, autocross, road race, and drag racing applications.

This fascinating book is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins. While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even while preserving ethnic identities at the same time. In this sense, nearly all Americans are "Albion's Seed," no matter what their ethnicity may be. The concluding section of this remarkable book explores the ways that regional cultures have continued to dominate national politics from 1789 to 1988, and still help to shape attitudes toward education, government, gender, and violence, on which differences between American regions are greater than between European nations.

Class-tested and coherent, this textbook teaches classical and web information retrieval, including web search and the related areas of text classification and text clustering from basic concepts. It gives an up-to-date treatment of all aspects of the design and implementation of systems for gathering, indexing, and searching documents; methods for evaluating systems; and an introduction to the use of machine learning methods on text collections. All the important ideas are explained using examples and figures, making it perfect for introductory courses in information retrieval for advanced undergraduates and graduate students in computer science. Based on feedback from extensive classroom experience, the book has been carefully structured in order to make teaching more natural and effective. Slides and additional exercises (with solutions for lecturers) are also available through the book's supporting website to help course instructors prepare their lectures.