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What: “Daytona: From the Birth of Speed to the Death of the Man in Black.”

Author: Ed Hinton (Warner Books).

Price: $29.95.

Although most of the narration revolves around the old races on the sand at Daytona Beach, Fla., and the Daytona 500, the book also traces the rise of NASCAR from a Southern Sunday party to the fastest-growing sport in the country.

Hinton, a longtime chronicler of NASCAR, has captured the spirit of the colorful characters from Big Bill France, Fireball Roberts and Richard Petty to Dale Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon, warts and all. This is not a historical tome, it is a collection of vignettes, short stories and personality profiles of stock car racing’s brightest stars, and some of its lowest elements.

Particularly poignant is the little-known story of Don Williams, a Late Model Sportsman driver who, after being critically injured in his first race at Daytona, lay in a semi-conscious state for more than 10 years--without a single card or acknowledgment from NASCAR until a floral bouquet arrived at his funeral.

Hinton’s stories move along in the same manner as his favorite drivers: WFO. And to find out what that means, you have to read the book, all 352 pages.

It is an easy read because each of his little sketches can be read independently of the others. Not so easy to swallow is his publicist’s statement that “[NASCAR] races take place everywhere from Newport Beach, California, to Watkins Glen, New York.”

Most of the book was written before Earnhardt’s fatal crash last February in the Daytona 500, but Hinton, who wrote a series of articles critical of NASCAR’s lack of safety standards, concludes with background on his research and the terrible irony of the accident coming only a week after the series appeared in The Times, Chicago Tribune and Orlando Sentinel.