#who has had to read her fair share of hagiography
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IOTA Supporters: Tweeting a News Link Is “Spreading FUD”
The list of crimes to earn the opprobrium of IOTA fans is growing by the day. Journalists who fail to pen fawning hagiographies of David Sønstebø and his team are singled out for persecution by IOTA acolytes. But it’s not just reporters who are blacklisted: anyone who tweets a link to an IOTA story – or who even likes a tweet – is also deemed an enemy combatant.
Also read: London-Based LBX Exchange Adds Bitcoin Cash to Its Offerings
IOTA’s Defenders Go on the Warpath
As someone famous once said, “The essence of propaganda consists in winning people over to an idea so sincerely, so vitally, that in the end they succumb to it utterly and can never escape from it.” It’s an ethos that a subset of the IOTA community have taken to heart. Last week, the Financial Times’ Jemima Kelly wrote about IOTA’s obsession with controlling the narrative. While no organization welcomes unfavorable press coverage, IOTA has gone to extreme lengths to penalize anyone who doesn’t toe the party line. In her piece, Kelly explained:
IOTA talks a lot about FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt), a term adopted by the crypto community to refer to critical commentary. The acronym might also reasonably be applied to its own approach to dealing with critics.
She added: “IOTA’s ‘troll army’ – which is how its team of online disciples is often referred to as – have scared off some people enough for them not to want to speak out. Two people we asked to speak to for this story told us they didn’t want to because they were worried about the consequences of doing so. One was worried about being threatened with physical harm. Tim Swanson, founder of tech consultancy Post Oak Labs and a leading authority in the space, told us he undid a retweet of a story that was mildly critical of IOTA because he felt intimidated by…a senior person from the IOTA team”.
Liking a Tweet Is Now FUD
Jemima Kelly wasn’t kidding about sharing a tweet being grounds for referral to IOTA’s Politburo for Public Enlightenment, better known as Tangleblog. It is here that the most egregious thought crimes are called out. According to the blog’s author, for example, Zcash founder Zooko is guilty of spreading FUD by tweeting a link to Kelly’s FT article. As if that wasn’t heinous enough, Grayscale Investments had the temerity to like the tweet, which is apparently “breathtaking” and part of a “dirty agenda”.
The list of organizations that IOTA and its army has called to boycott is too long to list, but includes Bitcoin.com, Coindesk, and The Next Web, whose lead journalist Mix has earned particular ire, and to his credit made a point of regularly prodding the IOTA beehive with scant regard for the consequences. When journalists get out of line by reporting the news, or Twitter users overstep the mark by sharing tweets, IOTA’s enforcers follow a predictable pattern.
Anatomy of an IOTA Attack
The first strike usually occurs on Twitter. The writer of an article such as this one will be sent veiled threats, told that they “aren’t a journalist” and ought to know better than to “spread FUD and misinformation”. If the writer has committed any minor infraction in the past – tweeting support for a now defunct cryptocurrency; composed an embarrassing personal blog; been pictured in an ill-advised Christmas sweater – this will be dredged up and used as ammo. It’s a dirty war and anything is fair game.
Next, the comments section of the article will fill up with copy pasted complaints as IOTA’s troll army goes into overdrive. With a publication such as news.Bitcoin.com, it may be suggested that the company is motivated to “FUD IOTA” because it fears that bitcoin is threatened by IOTA’s superior DAG technology. Or perhaps the writer is salty because they didn’t buy IOTA when it was 20 cents. While some journalists and researchers refuse to be cowed, others drink the Kool Aid, undo their retweets, and refrain from all public discussion about IOTA in favor of a quiet life.
It was Joseph Goebbels, for the record, who said that quote at the outset. “The essence of propaganda consists in winning people over to an idea so sincerely, so vitally, that in the end they succumb to it utterly and can never escape from it.” Inside IOTA’s Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, the education of the masses has only just begun.
Do you think a calm and reasonable debate will ensue in the comments section for this article? Let us know in the comments section below.
Images courtesy of Shutterstock, and Twitter.
Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section.
The post IOTA Supporters: Tweeting a News Link Is “Spreading FUD” appeared first on Bitcoin News.
IOTA Supporters: Tweeting a News Link Is “Spreading FUD” published first on https://medium.com/@smartoptions
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On Enzo’s Trail: Luca Dal Monte’s New Ferrari Biography is a Must-Read
Luca Dal Monte is thoroughly Italian. Born and raised in Cremona, home of Stradivari, in the Lombardy region of northern Italy by the left bank of the River Po. Lives today in Milan. Ran press operations for Ferrari and Maserati, two of the most essential, essentially Italian marques. He’s also written several books, including a novel called La Scuderia and, most recently, Ferrari Rex, a weighty yet wonderfully colorful biography of Enzo Ferrari. There’s a fair chance it will become an Italian miniseries.
Yet, intriguingly, 55-year-old Dal Monte credits America—where Ferrari Rex is only just now available in English and retitled as Enzo Ferrari: Power, Politics, and the Making of an Automotive Empire—for his success.
“After 30 years, there was really nothing I could add to my job profile. … Writing had become my second profession. You reach a point when you’re 50 and say, ‘I’d rather do it today than wait any longer.’”
On a U.S. press tour, Dal Monte has come to meet us at Dominick European Car Repair, a mecca for all things old-car Italian, in White Plains, New York. We’re meant to drive off in a rare and valuable 1966 Ferrari 275 GTB belonging to a generous customer, an early-production long-nose model with several unique details and a value in excess of $3 million. I offer Dal Monte the first drive, but eyeing the steady drizzle of a cold Westchester morning along with some spirited displays of local driving skill outside the garage, he declines: “Not today.”
I, however, don’t have to be asked twice to drive the first 275 GTB I’ve ever sat in. Still, determined to remain on task, I ask Dal Monte, “What is it about you and America?”
“I’ve always been fascinated with you guys,” he says. “I belong to the Race to the Moon generation. I remember watching the Apollo launches and splashdowns on TV, dreaming of one day going to the U.S.
“I also belong to the post-JFK generation. My mom and dad remember to this day where they were when they heard the news of JFK’s assassination. I know all Americans [of a certain age] do, but in Italy it’s more rare. Perhaps as a consequence of this, I developed an interest, which became love and then passion, for U.S. politics and history.”
Dal Monte admits to a teenage predilection for U.S. sitcoms like “Happy Days.” “And then, I mean, you go back to ‘The Brady Bunch’ in the early ’70s, that was [American] high school at its best!” he says. He proudly says that this, along with understanding parents and an unlikely exchange program between Cremona and Owensboro, Kentucky, brought him to America for his senior year of high school. He liked it so much he decided to stay for college at the University of Kentucky, studying political science and American history while writing for the Kentucky Kernel, the school’s newspaper. His children attend American universities, and American politics remains his favorite subject. As evidence, he has an extensive collection of American political memorabilia, including more than 600 buttons, posters, and convention flyers dating as far back as 1896.
After his U.S. schooling, though, it was back to Italy for compulsory military duty. Dal Monte cast around for journalism jobs upon completing his service and applied to Peugeot on a lark. He wound up landing a plum assignment in the French automaker’s Italian press office. With no experience, he chalked up this early career success to the employer appeal of his English language skill and firsthand knowledge of America. Ditto Toyota, which hired him a few years later to head the press effort for its newly established Italian operation, and then Ferrari, which sent Dal Monte back to the U.S. in New Jersey to run its North American press office. He then helped relaunch Maserati in the States before returning to Italy to oversee the company’s worldwide press operations.
In Dal Monte’s view, the American connection led to jobs that capped his career. They also put him in a position to gain enhanced access to relevant Ferrari and Alfa Romeo documents, making a burgeoning historian’s job easier. The Enzo Ferrari tome joins a growing list of works that includes overviews of Ferrari cars and racing, a 100-year history of Maserati, and La Scuderia, a spy and love story set against a 1930s racing backdrop. As for the Ferrari biography, the Italian press has hailed it as the most scholarly and deeply researched biography of Il Commendatore yet, of the admittedly few that have been written.
While living in Ferrari’s Modena heartland during his tenure at Maserati, Dal Monte was surrounded by older folk who had worked with Enzo. He often met them after work following initial interviews, and they filled in details and remembered things they had not in earlier conversations. His position with Maserati gave him access to a wide range of primary materials, too. “One of the greatest assets in my research was the Alfa Romeo archive in Arese, near Milan,” he says. There Dal Monte found Enzo Ferrari’s personnel file from when he managed Alfa’s race team. It documented Ferrari’s importance to the great Italian racing power in the inter-war period as well as elements of his financial acuity. “Much like a Broadway producer, he used other people’s money to finance his endeavors,” Dal Monte points out. His was a kind of scholarly curiosity and deep-dive research not always associated with the public relations profession.
“There are two kinds of PR people: those who come from marketing and those who come from journalism,” Dal Monte says. He sees himself in the latter camp; though his own experience in traditional journalism was slight, his formative years in college forever shaped his perspective. Facts, analysis, and color, not marketing fluff, became his focus. Perhaps inevitably, in 2015, he left PR for good.
“After 30 years in a worldwide position, there was really nothing I could add to my job profile, I guess,” he reflects. “And in the meantime, writing had become my second profession. You reach a point when you’re 50 and say, ‘I’d rather do it today than wait any longer.’”
Past employment with Ferrari notwithstanding, Dal Monte’s eight years of research into one of Italy’s most famous figures has not resulted in a hagiography. It contradicts Ferrari’s own 1962 autobiography, for instance, by including the story of how, long before he ran Alfa’s winning race team or set up a successful car company, the young Ferrari was failing at running his own first business, a coachworks. In fact, the man didn’t build his first Ferrari car until he was 49, after World War II, which ought to lend hope and inspiration to late bloomers everywhere. Dal Monte’s opus also runs down Ferrari’s serial infidelity to his wife, though he sees its roots in her lifelong depression and anxiety, which made her pull away from him. “He needed someone,” the writer says.
Of course, all of Italy forgave and continues to forgive Ferrari for his transgressions. “If you grew up in Italy in the ’70s, Enzo Ferrari was a towering figure,” Dal Monte explains. “There was the Pope, and then there was Enzo. I am not kidding; by the mid-’70s, Enzo had reached a demigod dimension. He was the Grand Old Man not just of motor racing but of the country. You could even hear him call into some of the early TV automotive/motor racing shows and speak—to the point of shouting—with the talk show host in order to defend his cars and his drivers. More the cars than the drivers, actually. He was everywhere.
“When I did the research for my book, I was able to scientifically confirm what I remembered from those days: There was hardly a day in which national newspapers did not have a story on Enzo. It was inevitable, when discussing his cars, races, or drivers: You must mention or quote him.”
Dal Monte remembers as a teenager in the late ’70s taking an hourlong train ride to Modena early one morning with his brother, just to catch a glimpse of Ferrari having his morning shave at a barbershop. Ferrari stared out at them staring in at him and smiled.
“I had wanted to write a book on him for a long, long time,” Dal Monte says. “But I didn’t want it to be a book like all the others. I wanted to tell more. More of the man, and of the men and women around him. When I was hired at Ferrari, I gained access not just to archives but to people. And it was at that point I realized that if I really put my mind at it, it could be possible.
Luca Dal Monte tours New York’s Westchester County in a 275 GTB long nose, a fitting symbol for the life of his subject, the man who lent his name to what has become one of the world’s most valuable luxury brands. A very early-production long nose, this 1967 transition model shares features with earlier short nose and later long nose production, but it has some unique aspects, too.
“Of course, I love cars, especially sports cars. But my fascination with Enzo went and still goes far beyond that. It was his lifelong struggle to succeed, to become someone, to beat the odds, to go down in history that intrigued me. In so many ways, Enzo was like [Ronald] Reagan: a man with no particular specific qualities that made it big. There’s a beautiful book on Reagan whose subtitle reads, ‘How an ordinary man became an extraordinary leader.’ In my opinion, that applies to Enzo Ferrari as well: ‘How an ordinary man became an automotive giant.’”
The post On Enzo’s Trail: Luca Dal Monte’s New Ferrari Biography is a Must-Read appeared first on Automobile Magazine.
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On Enzo’s Trail: Luca Dal Monte’s New Ferrari Biography is a Must-Read
Luca Dal Monte is thoroughly Italian. Born and raised in Cremona, home of Stradivari, in the Lombardy region of northern Italy by the left bank of the River Po. Lives today in Milan. Ran press operations for Ferrari and Maserati, two of the most essential, essentially Italian marques. He’s also written several books, including a novel called La Scuderia and, most recently, Ferrari Rex, a weighty yet wonderfully colorful biography of Enzo Ferrari. There’s a fair chance it will become an Italian miniseries.
Yet, intriguingly, 55-year-old Dal Monte credits America—where Ferrari Rex is only just now available in English and retitled as Enzo Ferrari: Power, Politics, and the Making of an Automotive Empire—for his success.
“After 30 years, there was really nothing I could add to my job profile. … Writing had become my second profession. You reach a point when you’re 50 and say, ‘I’d rather do it today than wait any longer.’”
On a U.S. press tour, Dal Monte has come to meet us at Dominick European Car Repair, a mecca for all things old-car Italian, in White Plains, New York. We’re meant to drive off in a rare and valuable 1966 Ferrari 275 GTB belonging to a generous customer, an early-production long-nose model with several unique details and a value in excess of $3 million. I offer Dal Monte the first drive, but eyeing the steady drizzle of a cold Westchester morning along with some spirited displays of local driving skill outside the garage, he declines: “Not today.”
I, however, don’t have to be asked twice to drive the first 275 GTB I’ve ever sat in. Still, determined to remain on task, I ask Dal Monte, “What is it about you and America?”
“I’ve always been fascinated with you guys,” he says. “I belong to the Race to the Moon generation. I remember watching the Apollo launches and splashdowns on TV, dreaming of one day going to the U.S.
“I also belong to the post-JFK generation. My mom and dad remember to this day where they were when they heard the news of JFK’s assassination. I know all Americans [of a certain age] do, but in Italy it’s more rare. Perhaps as a consequence of this, I developed an interest, which became love and then passion, for U.S. politics and history.”
Dal Monte admits to a teenage predilection for U.S. sitcoms like “Happy Days.” “And then, I mean, you go back to ‘The Brady Bunch’ in the early ’70s, that was [American] high school at its best!” he says. He proudly says that this, along with understanding parents and an unlikely exchange program between Cremona and Owensboro, Kentucky, brought him to America for his senior year of high school. He liked it so much he decided to stay for college at the University of Kentucky, studying political science and American history while writing for the Kentucky Kernel, the school’s newspaper. His children attend American universities, and American politics remains his favorite subject. As evidence, he has an extensive collection of American political memorabilia, including more than 600 buttons, posters, and convention flyers dating as far back as 1896.
After his U.S. schooling, though, it was back to Italy for compulsory military duty. Dal Monte cast around for journalism jobs upon completing his service and applied to Peugeot on a lark. He wound up landing a plum assignment in the French automaker’s Italian press office. With no experience, he chalked up this early career success to the employer appeal of his English language skill and firsthand knowledge of America. Ditto Toyota, which hired him a few years later to head the press effort for its newly established Italian operation, and then Ferrari, which sent Dal Monte back to the U.S. in New Jersey to run its North American press office. He then helped relaunch Maserati in the States before returning to Italy to oversee the company’s worldwide press operations.
In Dal Monte’s view, the American connection led to jobs that capped his career. They also put him in a position to gain enhanced access to relevant Ferrari and Alfa Romeo documents, making a burgeoning historian’s job easier. The Enzo Ferrari tome joins a growing list of works that includes overviews of Ferrari cars and racing, a 100-year history of Maserati, and La Scuderia, a spy and love story set against a 1930s racing backdrop. As for the Ferrari biography, the Italian press has hailed it as the most scholarly and deeply researched biography of Il Commendatore yet, of the admittedly few that have been written.
While living in Ferrari’s Modena heartland during his tenure at Maserati, Dal Monte was surrounded by older folk who had worked with Enzo. He often met them after work following initial interviews, and they filled in details and remembered things they had not in earlier conversations. His position with Maserati gave him access to a wide range of primary materials, too. “One of the greatest assets in my research was the Alfa Romeo archive in Arese, near Milan,” he says. There Dal Monte found Enzo Ferrari’s personnel file from when he managed Alfa’s race team. It documented Ferrari’s importance to the great Italian racing power in the inter-war period as well as elements of his financial acuity. “Much like a Broadway producer, he used other people’s money to finance his endeavors,” Dal Monte points out. His was a kind of scholarly curiosity and deep-dive research not always associated with the public relations profession.
“There are two kinds of PR people: those who come from marketing and those who come from journalism,” Dal Monte says. He sees himself in the latter camp; though his own experience in traditional journalism was slight, his formative years in college forever shaped his perspective. Facts, analysis, and color, not marketing fluff, became his focus. Perhaps inevitably, in 2015, he left PR for good.
“After 30 years in a worldwide position, there was really nothing I could add to my job profile, I guess,” he reflects. “And in the meantime, writing had become my second profession. You reach a point when you’re 50 and say, ‘I’d rather do it today than wait any longer.’”
Past employment with Ferrari notwithstanding, Dal Monte’s eight years of research into one of Italy’s most famous figures has not resulted in a hagiography. It contradicts Ferrari’s own 1962 autobiography, for instance, by including the story of how, long before he ran Alfa’s winning race team or set up a successful car company, the young Ferrari was failing at running his own first business, a coachworks. In fact, the man didn’t build his first Ferrari car until he was 49, after World War II, which ought to lend hope and inspiration to late bloomers everywhere. Dal Monte’s opus also runs down Ferrari’s serial infidelity to his wife, though he sees its roots in her lifelong depression and anxiety, which made her pull away from him. “He needed someone,” the writer says.
Of course, all of Italy forgave and continues to forgive Ferrari for his transgressions. “If you grew up in Italy in the ’70s, Enzo Ferrari was a towering figure,” Dal Monte explains. “There was the Pope, and then there was Enzo. I am not kidding; by the mid-’70s, Enzo had reached a demigod dimension. He was the Grand Old Man not just of motor racing but of the country. You could even hear him call into some of the early TV automotive/motor racing shows and speak—to the point of shouting—with the talk show host in order to defend his cars and his drivers. More the cars than the drivers, actually. He was everywhere.
“When I did the research for my book, I was able to scientifically confirm what I remembered from those days: There was hardly a day in which national newspapers did not have a story on Enzo. It was inevitable, when discussing his cars, races, or drivers: You must mention or quote him.”
Dal Monte remembers as a teenager in the late ’70s taking an hourlong train ride to Modena early one morning with his brother, just to catch a glimpse of Ferrari having his morning shave at a barbershop. Ferrari stared out at them staring in at him and smiled.
“I had wanted to write a book on him for a long, long time,” Dal Monte says. “But I didn’t want it to be a book like all the others. I wanted to tell more. More of the man, and of the men and women around him. When I was hired at Ferrari, I gained access not just to archives but to people. And it was at that point I realized that if I really put my mind at it, it could be possible.
Luca Dal Monte tours New York’s Westchester County in a 275 GTB long nose, a fitting symbol for the life of his subject, the man who lent his name to what has become one of the world’s most valuable luxury brands. A very early-production long nose, this 1967 transition model shares features with earlier short nose and later long nose production, but it has some unique aspects, too.
“Of course, I love cars, especially sports cars. But my fascination with Enzo went and still goes far beyond that. It was his lifelong struggle to succeed, to become someone, to beat the odds, to go down in history that intrigued me. In so many ways, Enzo was like [Ronald] Reagan: a man with no particular specific qualities that made it big. There’s a beautiful book on Reagan whose subtitle reads, ‘How an ordinary man became an extraordinary leader.’ In my opinion, that applies to Enzo Ferrari as well: ‘How an ordinary man became an automotive giant.’”
The post On Enzo’s Trail: Luca Dal Monte’s New Ferrari Biography is a Must-Read appeared first on Automobile Magazine.
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I keep seeing a lot of misinformation about Brighid the Celtic deity and St Brighid...
A lot of people seem to be saying that St Brighid was just made up by Christians when they tried to subsume pagan celebrations.
This is not quite right.
They seem to be implying that St Brighid was not a real person. The thing with Saints is that they are all actual historical people. What happened was that they made her feast day the same as Imbolg which was the traditional celebration of the goddess Brighid. Then some of the things attributed to Brighid the goddess were transferred to St Brighid.
That doesn't make St Brighid any less of an historical person.
I've got a post queued up with a little more on Imbolg, Brighid and St Brighid coming up but I needed to say something.
#Sorry I'm a history graduate#who has had to read her fair share of hagiography#Brighid#St Brighid#St Brigit#Brigit
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On Enzo’s Trail: Luca Dal Monte’s New Ferrari Biography is a Must-Read
Luca Dal Monte is thoroughly Italian. Born and raised in Cremona, home of Stradivari, in the Lombardy region of northern Italy by the left bank of the River Po. Lives today in Milan. Ran press operations for Ferrari and Maserati, two of the most essential, essentially Italian marques. He’s also written several books, including a novel called La Scuderia and, most recently, Ferrari Rex, a weighty yet wonderfully colorful biography of Enzo Ferrari. There’s a fair chance it will become an Italian miniseries.
Yet, intriguingly, 55-year-old Dal Monte credits America—where Ferrari Rex is only just now available in English and retitled as Enzo Ferrari: Power, Politics, and the Making of an Automotive Empire—for his success.
“After 30 years, there was really nothing I could add to my job profile. … Writing had become my second profession. You reach a point when you’re 50 and say, ‘I’d rather do it today than wait any longer.’”
On a U.S. press tour, Dal Monte has come to meet us at Dominick European Car Repair, a mecca for all things old-car Italian, in White Plains, New York. We’re meant to drive off in a rare and valuable 1966 Ferrari 275 GTB belonging to a generous customer, an early-production long-nose model with several unique details and a value in excess of $3 million. I offer Dal Monte the first drive, but eyeing the steady drizzle of a cold Westchester morning along with some spirited displays of local driving skill outside the garage, he declines: “Not today.”
I, however, don’t have to be asked twice to drive the first 275 GTB I’ve ever sat in. Still, determined to remain on task, I ask Dal Monte, “What is it about you and America?”
“I’ve always been fascinated with you guys,” he says. “I belong to the Race to the Moon generation. I remember watching the Apollo launches and splashdowns on TV, dreaming of one day going to the U.S.
“I also belong to the post-JFK generation. My mom and dad remember to this day where they were when they heard the news of JFK’s assassination. I know all Americans [of a certain age] do, but in Italy it’s more rare. Perhaps as a consequence of this, I developed an interest, which became love and then passion, for U.S. politics and history.”
Dal Monte admits to a teenage predilection for U.S. sitcoms like “Happy Days.” “And then, I mean, you go back to ‘The Brady Bunch’ in the early ’70s, that was [American] high school at its best!” he says. He proudly says that this, along with understanding parents and an unlikely exchange program between Cremona and Owensboro, Kentucky, brought him to America for his senior year of high school. He liked it so much he decided to stay for college at the University of Kentucky, studying political science and American history while writing for the Kentucky Kernel, the school’s newspaper. His children attend American universities, and American politics remains his favorite subject. As evidence, he has an extensive collection of American political memorabilia, including more than 600 buttons, posters, and convention flyers dating as far back as 1896.
After his U.S. schooling, though, it was back to Italy for compulsory military duty. Dal Monte cast around for journalism jobs upon completing his service and applied to Peugeot on a lark. He wound up landing a plum assignment in the French automaker’s Italian press office. With no experience, he chalked up this early career success to the employer appeal of his English language skill and firsthand knowledge of America. Ditto Toyota, which hired him a few years later to head the press effort for its newly established Italian operation, and then Ferrari, which sent Dal Monte back to the U.S. in New Jersey to run its North American press office. He then helped relaunch Maserati in the States before returning to Italy to oversee the company’s worldwide press operations.
In Dal Monte’s view, the American connection led to jobs that capped his career. They also put him in a position to gain enhanced access to relevant Ferrari and Alfa Romeo documents, making a burgeoning historian’s job easier. The Enzo Ferrari tome joins a growing list of works that includes overviews of Ferrari cars and racing, a 100-year history of Maserati, and La Scuderia, a spy and love story set against a 1930s racing backdrop. As for the Ferrari biography, the Italian press has hailed it as the most scholarly and deeply researched biography of Il Commendatore yet, of the admittedly few that have been written.
While living in Ferrari’s Modena heartland during his tenure at Maserati, Dal Monte was surrounded by older folk who had worked with Enzo. He often met them after work following initial interviews, and they filled in details and remembered things they had not in earlier conversations. His position with Maserati gave him access to a wide range of primary materials, too. “One of the greatest assets in my research was the Alfa Romeo archive in Arese, near Milan,” he says. There Dal Monte found Enzo Ferrari’s personnel file from when he managed Alfa’s race team. It documented Ferrari’s importance to the great Italian racing power in the inter-war period as well as elements of his financial acuity. “Much like a Broadway producer, he used other people’s money to finance his endeavors,” Dal Monte points out. His was a kind of scholarly curiosity and deep-dive research not always associated with the public relations profession.
“There are two kinds of PR people: those who come from marketing and those who come from journalism,” Dal Monte says. He sees himself in the latter camp; though his own experience in traditional journalism was slight, his formative years in college forever shaped his perspective. Facts, analysis, and color, not marketing fluff, became his focus. Perhaps inevitably, in 2015, he left PR for good.
“After 30 years in a worldwide position, there was really nothing I could add to my job profile, I guess,” he reflects. “And in the meantime, writing had become my second profession. You reach a point when you’re 50 and say, ‘I’d rather do it today than wait any longer.’”
Past employment with Ferrari notwithstanding, Dal Monte’s eight years of research into one of Italy’s most famous figures has not resulted in a hagiography. It contradicts Ferrari’s own 1962 autobiography, for instance, by including the story of how, long before he ran Alfa’s winning race team or set up a successful car company, the young Ferrari was failing at running his own first business, a coachworks. In fact, the man didn’t build his first Ferrari car until he was 49, after World War II, which ought to lend hope and inspiration to late bloomers everywhere. Dal Monte’s opus also runs down Ferrari’s serial infidelity to his wife, though he sees its roots in her lifelong depression and anxiety, which made her pull away from him. “He needed someone,” the writer says.
Of course, all of Italy forgave and continues to forgive Ferrari for his transgressions. “If you grew up in Italy in the ’70s, Enzo Ferrari was a towering figure,” Dal Monte explains. “There was the Pope, and then there was Enzo. I am not kidding; by the mid-’70s, Enzo had reached a demigod dimension. He was the Grand Old Man not just of motor racing but of the country. You could even hear him call into some of the early TV automotive/motor racing shows and speak—to the point of shouting—with the talk show host in order to defend his cars and his drivers. More the cars than the drivers, actually. He was everywhere.
“When I did the research for my book, I was able to scientifically confirm what I remembered from those days: There was hardly a day in which national newspapers did not have a story on Enzo. It was inevitable, when discussing his cars, races, or drivers: You must mention or quote him.”
Dal Monte remembers as a teenager in the late ’70s taking an hourlong train ride to Modena early one morning with his brother, just to catch a glimpse of Ferrari having his morning shave at a barbershop. Ferrari stared out at them staring in at him and smiled.
“I had wanted to write a book on him for a long, long time,” Dal Monte says. “But I didn’t want it to be a book like all the others. I wanted to tell more. More of the man, and of the men and women around him. When I was hired at Ferrari, I gained access not just to archives but to people. And it was at that point I realized that if I really put my mind at it, it could be possible.
Luca Dal Monte tours New York’s Westchester County in a 275 GTB long nose, a fitting symbol for the life of his subject, the man who lent his name to what has become one of the world’s most valuable luxury brands. A very early-production long nose, this 1967 transition model shares features with earlier short nose and later long nose production, but it has some unique aspects, too.
“Of course, I love cars, especially sports cars. But my fascination with Enzo went and still goes far beyond that. It was his lifelong struggle to succeed, to become someone, to beat the odds, to go down in history that intrigued me. In so many ways, Enzo was like [Ronald] Reagan: a man with no particular specific qualities that made it big. There’s a beautiful book on Reagan whose subtitle reads, ‘How an ordinary man became an extraordinary leader.’ In my opinion, that applies to Enzo Ferrari as well: ‘How an ordinary man became an automotive giant.’”
The post On Enzo’s Trail: Luca Dal Monte’s New Ferrari Biography is a Must-Read appeared first on Automobile Magazine.
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_.Törpe🤍._
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Untitled
picnic-at-dreaming-rock
A Poet Without Hysterics is Rare
ryoquerro
Ryo Querro