Average Rating: 
Rating: - The best book you'll read all year.
You don't have to know a thing about horse racing or even care about horses to love this book. Laura Hillenbrand has written a book so good that it sets the gold standard for all racing histories and simultaneously transcends its subject and becomes a classic portrait of early 20th century America. This is the story of the miraculous meeting of 4 uniquely self-made men - the exuberant owner, the mystical trainer and two colorful jockeys - and one less than promising racehorse. Together they lived the greatest adventure in racing history. Hillenbrand makes the technical minutia of racing interesting to the layman through wonderful anecdotes. Not only will you learn the physical feats and tactical strategy a jockey must employ during a race, but you will also enjoy Hillenbrand's vivid description of the jockey's journeyman life. The tale of Seabiscuit's rise from obscurity is filled with so many twists and turns that I don't want say to much about it, but suffice to say, it will keep you on the edge of your seat. Be sure to read Hillenbrand's "Acknowledgements" at the end of the book. The story of how she researched the book and the interviews she conducted is fascinating. I don't care what Hillenbrand's next book is about - judging from how good this one was, I'll buy it sight unseen.
Rating: - --Don't miss this one!--
This book was chosen to be read by my book club and I dragged my feet until the last minute because I thought that I'd be bored with the subject. Once I got into the story, I had a wonderful surprise. Laura Hillenbrand has written a detailed account of Seabiscuit, and managed to made it incredibly interesting and very exciting.The author starts by giving the biographies of the fascinating men that had the most to do with Seabiscuit's rise to fame. They were Charles Howard, Tom Smith, Red Pollard and George Woolf. Each of these men contributed to the greatness of the famed horse. Seabiscuit himself was not the most beautiful of horses and, in fact was a pretty difficult animal to deal with. Trainer Tom Smith saw something in the horse that he knew was worth tapping and encouraged Charles Howard to purchase Seabiscuit. Red Pollard and George Woolf were the jockeys who rode him into fame. By the time I was reading about the races, I couldn't put the book down until I found out which horse won that particular race. This is a great American story!
Rating: - Exciting book even if you're not a horseracing fan
SEABISCUIT: AN AMERICAN LEGEND by Laura Hillenbrand is the true story of how three men and a great racehorse captivated the world . . . I'm not a horseracing fan, but you don't have to be to enjoy this exciting book . . . Seabiscuit was an unlikely champion . . . his racing form was all wrong and for two years, he fought his trainers and floundered at the lowest level of racing . . . only when he was purchased by a former bicycle repairman (who introduced the automobile to the American West) and then teamed-up with a failing jockey and enigmatic trainer did he begin to succeed . . . by the end of his career, I found myself practically cheering his every race.That's probably because the writing was so excellent . . . there were many memorable passages; among them:
For Smith, training was a long, quiet conversation. He was baffled by other people's inability to grasp what he was doing. "It's easy to talk to a horse if you understand his language," he once said. "Horses stay the same from the day they are born until the day they die. . . . They are only changed by the way people treat them." He believed with complete conviction that no animal was permanently ruined. Every horse could be improved. He lived by a single maxim: "Learn your horse. Each one is an individual, and once you penetrate his mind and heart, you can often work wonders with an otherwise intractable beast." Most jockeys took a more straightforward approach: the radical diet, consisting of six hundred calories a day. Red Pollard went as long as a year eating nothing but eggs. Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons confessed that during his riding days a typical dinner consisted of a leaf or two of lettuce, and he would eat them only after placing them on windowsills to dry the water out of them. Water, because of its weight, was the prime enemy, and jockeys went to absurd lengths to keep it out of their systems. Most drank virtually nothing. A common practice was to have jockeys' room valet open soda cans by puncturing the top with an ice pick, making it impossible to drink more than a few drops at a time. The sight and sound of water became a torment; Fitzsimmons habitually avoided areas of the barn where horses were being washed because the spectacle of flowing water was agonizing. Somewhere among the railways in the heart of the country, Seabiscuit slipped out of 1938. That year, no individual had known fame and popularity that was as intense and far-reaching. A study of news outlets revealed that the little horse had drawn more newspaper coverage in 1938 than Roosevelt, who was second, Hitler (third), Mussolini (fourth), out of other newsmakers. His match with War Admiral was almost certainly the single biggest news story of the year and one of the biggest sports moments of the century. "The affection that this inarticulate brown horse had aroused," journalist Ed Sullivan would write, "was a most amazing thing."
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