The author confesses in a foreword that this "detective story winds through a maze of clues over the span of a century." In reality, he tells the story of the battle between the railway and the steam carriage in the l830s and 1890s in Great Britain and the battle between the steam and petroleum automobiles in France and Germany in the l880s and 1890s. Actually, of course, steam had been outlawed in Germany, but the contributions of Benz and Daimler had been nurtured in France. Beasley accomplishes his mission most engagingly. He thinks most people would date the invention of the automobile "in the early years of the twentieth century," while in fact it was developed "to perfection" by 1829, only to be suppressed by the British government. . . . As a long-time student of that activity, I cannot but be impressed with the thoroughness of Beasley's research, and envious of some of the contacts he made in the course of his work, listed in his excellent bibliography The ardor with which oil men moved in on the automobile world is obvious, but the author has drawn a long bow when he feels they killed the steam car. The old American canard, that Standard Oil killed the Stanley, comes to mind. If one troubles to compare the consumption of gasoline by the steamer with that of the internal combustion car, the fable goes up in smoke: the steamer is the gas-guzzler. Only one major road race was won by a steamer, DeDion's 1898 victory, Marseilles-to-Nice. Steam held most mile and flying kilometer records for many years, but could not compete in the longer events. . . . . Only automobile enthusiasts whose interests begin after World War II will not find this an engrossing book It is excellent, and does not suffer from what appears to be a quaint loyalty to Marxist economics.