I guess it says something about why we have such highly polluting, fuel inefficient motor vehicles that many copies of this well-written and interesting book sit unread on my library's shelves. Nominally, this is a book about a multimillion dollar contest to develop an extraordinary car in both fuel efficiency and pollution control while still meeting much of the driving capabilities we expect from "normal" cars. The author follows multiple contestant teams through the long process of developing and testing their entries. The author gets us to know the heart of the people involved as well as the technical, financial, and political hurdles they must overcome. In the end, the reader has a deep connection with them all. More to the point, the reader has a much better understanding of what it takes for anyone to build a product, find a niche, and all the other aspects of taking parts of the real world and turning them into something of benefit. As the author says about one of the contestants, "I only know he can't be killed. Bomb everything to rubble and watch him gather scrap. The Internet goes dark and he lights a match. And not him alone, but all ingenious kin: every kid in a shop, every girl and guy in a garage, every hacker and maker with no hope of bailout by bank or by nation." ( )

The book was somewhat interesting in that it was story about an important contest. The background on the teams and their struggles during the content was also interesting. At many points there was too much detail about the events and people's lives. I learned some about cars and about the X Prize. ( )

I had difficulty finishing the book. There was minimal excitement generated in the story although the topic looked promising. ( )

In 2007, the X Prize Foundation announced that it would give $10 million to anyone who could build a safe, mass-producible car that could travel 100 miles on the energy equivalent of one gallon of gas. The challenge attracted more than one hundred teams from all over the world. Jason Fagone follows four of those teams in Ingenious: A True Story of Invention, Automotive Daring, and the Race to Revive America.

The X Prize Foundation is most famously known for its first challenge to launch a spacecraft capable of carrying three people to 100 kilometers above the earth's surface, twice within two weeks. The XPrize is modeled on the prize that got Lindbergh to fly across the Atlantic. (He was not just an adventurer; He was flying for the Orteig Prize of $25,000.) The X Prize founder uses the "bald appeal of human greed to achieve an idealistic goal." Like the Orteig Prize, the Space X prize had very simple rules.

The Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize was a bit more muddled. Originally it was supposed to be a cross country race. Then it became a series of tests at the Michigan International Speedway. It had three categories: Mainstream, Alternative Tandem, and Alternative side-by-side.

Fagone looks at these four teams as the prepare for and compete for the prize.

Oliver Kuttner's Edison2 cars get the most ink. His theme was a relentless focus on reducing weight and improving aerodynamics. He had a car for each of the three categories.

Team Illuminati was literally built in the cornfields of Illinois. The team was lead by a part-time tinkerer using electric motors.

The West Philly Hybrid X Team was mostly students from the after school program at a West Philadelphia High School. Their goal was to make existing mainstream cars more efficient. They rebuilt a Ford GT using biodiesel and a Ford Focus with a hybrid electric gas system.

Aptera chose to go with a lightweight three-wheeled coupe. This was the best funded team of the four.

The book is well-written and enjoyable to read. At times I struggled to keep track of which team was which. Eventually, Edison2 elbows the other teams out of the narrative and takes a more prominent role in the book. I think that's because the team leader was a big robust character all by himself.

The narrative itself drags and lacks the suspense of a good climax because of the design of the competition. The tests happened over a series of weeks in June and July of 2010. The winner was announced later in September.

There are bits of the subtitle sprinkled in the book about how to revive innovation and development in America. The goal of the X Prize is encourage that kind of innovation and forward-thinking. As the prize rules got muddled for the automotive competition, so the narrative of this book got muddled.

Disclaimer: The publisher provided me with a review copy of the book. ( )

I found this book to be very interesting and an excellent read. Jason Fagone covers four of the teams trying to win the 10 million dollar X Prize to build a vehicle that can get 100 MPG and pass numerous challenges along the way. Building this vehicle is only part of the difficulty for the teams. Rules of the contest constantly change, costs mount, and to meet deadlines while trying to maintain any semblance of a family life is almost impossible. The most interesting part for me was learning about aerodynamics. I highly recommend this book. ( )