“There are few events with more pomp and pageantry than the running of the Indianapolis 500… It is part Memorial Day celebration, part three-ring circus, and part Shakespearean drama.”
–Black Noon, The Year They Stopped the Indy 500
Your reviewer confesses to feeling a sense of a personal connection to this book prior to reading it. The 1964 Indianapolis 500 was the first 500 of my memory, the first for which I was old enough to understand and appreciate the event, and the first for which the speedway’s radio broadcast, anchored by Sid Collins, was available to me. The tragic events of that day, which Art Garner’s Black Noon chronicles in scrupulous and sensitive detail, unfolded early in the race. To this day I can hear in my head the voice of speedway public address announcer Tom Carnegie as the radio broadcast relayed his words: “It is with deepest regret that we make this announcement. Driver Eddie Sachs was fatally injured in the accident on the main straightaway.”
Collins then began a powerful and heartfelt eulogy, improvised live. With the subsequent announcement that driver Dave MacDonald had also succumbed, the significance of what had happened was imprinted firmly into the consciousness of this young fan of racing.
Years later, shortly before his own passing, I met Collins and found him to be both personable and knowledgeable, gracious toward this still-young racing fan and well-informed about racing on the east coast. We did not discuss the 1964 race, but a personal interaction with someone who played an important and very public role that day only further rooted the 1964 Indianapolis 500 in my psyche.
As the years went by and I became a racing announcer and writer, I met other principals from that day. A.J Foyt, the eventual race winner. Parnelli Jones, the 1963 winner who contested for the 1964 lead prior to being sidelined by a fuel fire. Johnny Rutherford and Bobby Unser, both of whom were involved in the crash that took the lives of Sachs and MacDonald. Len Sutton, who had finished second in the 1962 race, and Bob Harkey, who finished eighth after starting 27th. Each time, the circumstances of our meeting had nothing to do with the 1964 500 and the race was not mentioned. But I was aware of the connection.
So I approached the reading of Black Noon with both anticipation and apprehension. It would be, after all, a story about a double fatality in a sport where many non-fans of racing think death is both expected and dismissed. It held the potential to be either cold and clinical or exploitative and insensitive. As it turned out, my anticipation was rewarded and my apprehension was unfounded.
Black Noon reports the details and circumstances of the 1964 race and the horrific crash that defined it, but it does far more. The book captures the scope and spectacle of the mid-century Indy 500, and it paints a thorough and intimate portrait of the people in and around the race. Not just of Sachs and MacDonald, who rightfully are the center of the book’s attention, but of the car owners, mechanics, families.
Writer Garner not only dissects the many factors that influenced events in 1964, but he correctly places the 1964 Indianapolis 500 in its pivotal position. The 1964 Indianapolis 500 was a turning point between the barnstorming daredevils of the early days and the emerging professionalism of modern racing. It was the race when the big, front-engine race cars started to become dinosaurs and the lithe, rear-engine cars began to assert themselves. And it was the race after which “anything goes” gave way to serious considerations about safety.
The personal insights and the inside perspectives make Black Noon much more than a story about a race that turned out badly. I may have opened this book feeling a connection to the 1964 Indianapolis 500, but all readers will close it feeling a connection to the two men who lost their lives that day, and to the many men and women whose lives were affected directly and deeply. 
Image Top Right: Black Noon, The Year They Stopped the Indy 500, by Art Garner, published by Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, New York, © 2014.
Image Bottom Left by Bob Marlow