A consumer’s guide to the best and...

A consumer’s guide to the best and worst of sports media and merchandise. Ground rules: If it can be read, played, heard, observed, worn, viewed, dialed or downloaded, it’s in play here.

What: Indianapolis Racing Memories, 1961-1969, by Dave Friedman.

Price: $39.95, Motorbooks International, P.O. Box 1, Osceola, Wis. 54020-0001. Phone: (800) 826-6600.

Dave Friedman’s photo essay covering nine years at the Indianapolis 500 should be a collector’s item if for no other reason that in more than 300 pictures, there is not a single crash scene. Some of the worst accidents in racing history occurred during that period, including the Eddie Sachs--Dave MacDonald crash in the 1964 race, but Friedman chose not to include them.

“I hated the crashes and I hated the people who went out just to photograph someone hitting the wall, or worse,” the author-photographer from Newport Beach wrote in the book’s preface. “I rarely came down to the infield where all of the other photographers were stacked up like rows of corn waiting for a crash.”

The pictorial history of one of Indy’s most turbulent eras, when cars changed from front-engine roadsters built in backyard garages to sleek, rear-engined sports cars tested in wind tunnels, is told in pictures and words by drivers such as Dan Gurney, Rodger Ward and Parnelli Jones.

There are candid portraits of drivers, mechanics, owners and hangers-on, and scenes on the track and in the pits, even a turbo fire and a wrecked car being hauled away--but no crashes. It’s a refreshing look at a violent sport.