Author, journalist, filmmaker

Before he penned best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-nominated biographies of Marlon Brando and Norman Mailer, Manso left a glittering academic career to study F1 drivers in Europe, resulting in 1969’s VROOM!! Conversations with the Grand Prix Champions, a groundbreaking collection of interviews with racers including inductees Dan Gurney, Jacky Ickx and Bruce McLaren, and 1972’s universally acclaimed FASTER! A Racer’s Diary with Jackie Stewart. Both, along with Leon Mandel’s Speed with Style with Peter Revson, provide perhaps the most penetrating insights into drivers of the era. Manso also co-authored and produced One by One (later retitled The Quick and the Dead), a documentary of the 1973 Grand Prix season, which won a Gold Prize at the 1974 Atlanta Film Festival. Over the years, Manso has written about cars and racing for magazines here and abroad, including Car and Driver, Road & Track, Playboy and Penthouse. He also managed the late Lella Lombardi’s 1974 campaign in the American F5000 series. An SCCA national license holder, Manso scored a class win at the Longest Day of Nelson.