Product Description

Richard Hammond is one of our most in-demand and best-loved television presenters. On September 20, 2006, he suffered a serious brain injury following a high-speed car crash, and the nation held its breath. On the Edge is his compelling account of life before and after the accident and an honest description of his year of recovery, full of drama and incident. It is also, perhaps, his explanation of why, as a married man and father of two young daughters, he was prepared to risk all by strapping himself to the front of a jet engine with the power of eleven Formula One cars. A daredevil and a petrolhead long before his association with Top Gear, Richard tells the story of his life as an adrenalin junkie, from the small boy showing off with ridiculous stunts on his bicycle to the adolescent with a near-obsessive attraction to speed and the smell of petrol. After a series of jobs in local radio, he graduated to television and eventually to Top Gear, one of the world's most popular shows, upgrading his car with each step up the ladder. His insights into the personalities, the camaraderie and, of course, the stunts for which Top Gear has become famous make compulsive reading. It was whilst filming for Top Gear, driving a jet-powered dragster at speeds over 300mph, that a tyre burst and the car left the track and rolled over, burying him in the earth. He was airlifted to hospital and hovered near death for several days. His wife Mindy tells the story of the anxious hours and days of watching and waiting until he finally emerged from his coma. In an extraordinarily powerful piece of writing, she and Richard then piece together the stages of his recovery as his shattered mind slowly reformed, leaving him sometimes lucid and plausible, sometimes confused and angry, and often exhausted. The final chapter recounts his return home and his triumphant reappearance in front of the cameras.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3063 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-20
• Released on: 2007-09-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 310 pages

Synopsis
Richard Hammond is one of our most in-demand and best-loved television presenters. On September 20, 2006, he suffered a serious brain injury following a high-speed car crash, and the nation held its breath. On the Edge is his compelling account of life before and after the accident and an honest description of his year of recovery, full of drama and incident. It is also, perhaps, his explanation of why, as a married man and father of two young daughters, he was prepared to risk all by strapping himself to the front of a jet engine with the power of eleven Formula One cars. A daredevil and a petrolhead long before his association with Top Gear, Richard tells the story of his life as an adrenalin junkie, from the small boy showing off with ridiculous stunts on his bicycle to the adolescent with a near-obsessive attraction to speed and the smell of petrol. After a series of jobs in local radio, he graduated to television and eventually to Top Gear, one of the world's most popular shows, upgrading his car with each step up the ladder. His insights into the personalities, the camaraderie and, of course, the stunts for which Top Gear has become famous make compulsive reading.It was whilst filming for Top Gear, driving a jet-powered dragster at speeds over 300mph, that a tyre burst and the car left the track and rolled over, burying him in the earth.

He was airlifted to hospital and hovered near death for several days. His wife Mindy tells the story of the anxious hours and days of watching and waiting until he finally emerged from his coma. In an extraordinarily powerful piece of writing, she and Richard then piece together the stages of his recovery as his shattered mind slowly reformed, leaving him sometimes lucid and plausible, sometimes confused and angry, and often exhausted. The final chapter recounts his return home and his triumphant reappearance in front of the cameras.

About the Author
Richard Hammond is internationally famous for co-presenting Top Gear over the last 4 years with Jeremy Clarkson; he also presented Brainiac: Science Abuse on Sky 1, Should I Worry About...? on BBC 1 and Time Commanders on BBC 2. His Richard Hammond's 5 O'Clock Show was shown every weekday on ITV1 during January and February 2006, and he is a team captain on the BBC2 quiz show, Petrolheads. He writes a weekly column in The Daily Mirror. His crash whilst filming for Top Gear in September 2006 made him a household name.

Customer Reviews

Speed Kills! - Nearly
A pleasant book, charting Richard's career rise to Top Gear.Then doing wacky stunts. Richard is quite a nutter,which almost polished him off,in a near fatal crash.

It's not the most riveting book I have ever read.That said,the enduring love between Richard,his wife Mindy and their children, really shines through. If ever their was a book upholding family values,this must surely be the one. For that reason alone it is worth the read.

Motto of the story, don't drive too fast, don't use remoulds, don't tell J C, don't forget to tell your Missus you love her, especially if you want clean laundry bringing to hospital! Glad he made it through ok.

Fascinating and well written.
I've just finished reading this book and found it thoroughly interesting and moving. I've only watched Top Gear a few times (one time happened to be Richard Hammond's return after the accident), and I'm not very interested in cars and bikes - but there's something about this guy that I like and so I wanted to read his book. It's well written - not the sort of autobiography that trails through hundreds of anecdotes before you get to the 'main bit', which is - in this case - Richard's terrible accident and all that was involved in his recovery. From the accident onwards the writing is shared with his wife, Mindy, and I thought her contribution perhaps the most moving, as I am a wife with young kids; I found myself thinking 'how would I cope in her situation?...'. Having said that, Richard's part is moving too in he gives us a rare insight into what it felt like to go through an experience like that - the struggle, the frustration. It's all written in a very 'normal' sort of way, very honest and down to earth. When I finished reading it I felt a bit like I'd sat and chatted to some very nice ordinary people (apologies for using the word 'nice' - it seems a bit bland really) who'd had something extraordinarily horrible happen to them but were relieved to be coming through the other side of it. I very much admire this family's strength and courage. I would imagine that this book would be a great help to anyone (or the family of anyone) recovering from a similar injury. However, I too found it very inspiring and uplifting just to see how this family pulled through this dreadful situation (one that was certainly much worse than anything I've ever experienced). Yes, he's a TV presenter - but this isn't a 'famous person' book, it's a book about strength, willpower, love and devotion.

undemanding read, nice touches,
Language wise this is an undemanding, non-technical book, by which I mean you wont learn to be a brain surgeon or rocket car scientist by reading it.

You will learn how one couple coped with and travelled through a terrible thing happening to one of them.

That the 'physically injured party' is well known make this a little like watching a film where you know the ending (think Apollo 13) but are interested to know how you get there - and when you do get to the end you realise you didn't know more than the basic, I don't think I'm spoiling anything to say 'he lived & went back to work' but it is good to know how he feels about that.

It's also good to read Mindy Hammonds' point of view - I particularly liked touches where they remembered things differently, he remembers a green car outside, she a blue one...I enjoyed that side of things very much.

The only thing is I would have liked two things, a bit more detail about the type of brain injury Richard suffered and also a bit more of the going back to work, getting into life again stuff. The end was a little rushed.

Enjoy.