Book Review: Lewis Hamilton “My Story” Special Celebration Edition

The McLaren Prodigy

With the driver market focus on whether Lewis Hamilton will stay with McLaren in 2013 and with McLaren back at the top of practice timesheets in this weekend’s Hungarian GP, I dusted off my copy of Lewis’ 2008 book “My Story” for another read. This version is the updated Special Celebration Edition from his earlier 2008 paperback with the same title. This edition includes his 2008 World Championship season win secured in the famous final lap of the wet Brazilian GP.

Lewis’ earlier paperback version is a much more narrative story book sprinkled with selected photographs at various stages of Lewis’ career. This edition is weighted much more with photos and less narration.

The “My Story” special edition is a book of 2 halves – the first half of the book covers Lewis’ career up to the end of 2008 in his own words. This section is an easy read, so don’t expect to get any deep technical reviews or details. Lewis’ family is obviously a big influence on him because he mentions them a lot through the text. If however, you are looking for major insights into Lewis’ relationship with Fernando Alonso or the in-team dramas during the 2007 season, forget it – you’ll have to read Mark Hughes’ “Lewis Hamilton: The Full Story” instead (I’ll get around to doing a review of this later).

The second half of the book is a photo album of his 2007 and 2008 seasons. There are some text captions for most photos but this section mainly contains large colour splash photos. In some ways, I feel the lack of text in this section is a slight drawback, but the publishers obviously wanted a magazine feel to this 2nd section.

I had a copy of Lewis’ first edition and I think the Special Edition, although some chunks of his back story from his early years and races that was in the first edition has been dropped, is an all round more appealing book in terms of presentation. I felt the first edition was a little light on photos and finished up to 2007 which was only Lewis’ first season.

If I had to choose between the two editions, I would go for the Special Edition.

Wow Factor or the Money Shot: There are some beautiful race images in the book although Lewis’ own family photos are great to see.

Suitable for: Casual sports or F1 fan, Lewis fans