A prolific writer and gifted editor, Ken W. Purdy was widely known and greatly admired during a journalism career that spanned nearly four decades before his death in 1972. His byline was familiar to millions of readers, as he produced an astounding array of articles and short stories for a wide variety of magazines ranging from the Atlantic Monthly to Playboy. From 1942 to 1955, he was editor of four magazines, Victory, Parade, True, and Argosy. He was a contributing editor for Playboy magazine for more than fifteen years, during which time he wrote more than seventy nonfiction and fiction pieces. Purdy was a writer and editor with interests ranging from hypnotism to crossbow archery, but his particular specialty was automotive writing. He wrote numerous articles, short stories, and books about cars and road racing, and he was recognized internationally as an authority on automobiles, both foreign and domestic and both...