Seabiscuit: An American Legend (Ballantine Reader's Circle)
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of the runaway phenomenon Unbroken comes a universal underdog story about the horse who came out of nowhere to become a legend.
“Fascinating . . . Vivid . . . A first-rate piece of storytelling, leaving us not only with a vivid portrait of a horse but a fascinating slice of American history as well.”—The New York Times
A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE CENTURY
Seabiscuit was one of the most electrifying and popular attractions in sports history and the single biggest newsmaker in the world in 1938, receiving more coverage than FDR, Hitler, or Mussolini. But his success was a surprise to the racing establishment, which had written off the crooked-legged racehorse with the sad tail. Three men changed Seabiscuit’s fortunes:
Charles Howard was a onetime bicycle repairman who introduced the automobile to the western United States and became an overnight millionaire. When he needed a trainer for his new racehorses, he hired Tom Smith, a mysterious mustang breaker from the Colorado plains. Smith urged Howard to buy Seabiscuit for a bargain-basement price, then hired as his jockey Red Pollard, a failed boxer who was blind in one eye, half-crippled, and prone to quoting passages from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Over four years, these unlikely partners survived a phenomenal run of bad fortune, conspiracy, and severe injury to transform Seabiscuit from a neurotic, pathologically indolent also-ran into an American sports icon.
“Fascinating . . . Vivid . . . A first-rate piece of storytelling, leaving us not only with a vivid portrait of a horse but a fascinating slice of American history as well.”—The New York Times
A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE CENTURY
Seabiscuit was one of the most electrifying and popular attractions in sports history and the single biggest newsmaker in the world in 1938, receiving more coverage than FDR, Hitler, or Mussolini. But his success was a surprise to the racing establishment, which had written off the crooked-legged racehorse with the sad tail. Three men changed Seabiscuit’s fortunes:
Charles Howard was a onetime bicycle repairman who introduced the automobile to the western United States and became an overnight millionaire. When he needed a trainer for his new racehorses, he hired Tom Smith, a mysterious mustang breaker from the Colorado plains. Smith urged Howard to buy Seabiscuit for a bargain-basement price, then hired as his jockey Red Pollard, a failed boxer who was blind in one eye, half-crippled, and prone to quoting passages from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Over four years, these unlikely partners survived a phenomenal run of bad fortune, conspiracy, and severe injury to transform Seabiscuit from a neurotic, pathologically indolent also-ran into an American sports icon.
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Community Reviews
This is one of my guilty pleasures: one of those story-behind-the-story books(though actually, like many of them, this was the inspiration for the "front" story—the movie, that is). But it's an interesting enough story, so who really cares if they made a movie out of it, or even if that's how I discovered it?
Anyway, it turns out the movie is actually remarkably accurate. They cut some key characters (including a couple of horses) and changed a few things, but for the most part they were pretty true to the spirit of the story, if not to the letter. The one thing they really misrepresented, I think, was Pollard's relationship with his family. Though they never had the money to come see him race (except his father, once, in a pretty low-rent race), it's apparent that he did keep in touch with them. He named his daughter after his sister. Oh, that's another thing they misrepresented: Pollard and Smith were both married. But those omissions are understandable. Though they do change the tone of the story, their inclusion would have made it far to complicated for a movie.
Anyway, it was fun to get to know the backstory. Seabiscuit is absolutely my son's favorite movie, so I've seen it about six hundred times. And will see it another six or eight hundred times, I'm sure. I wonder if I'll find it more or less interesting now that I've listened to this.
Anyway, it turns out the movie is actually remarkably accurate. They cut some key characters (including a couple of horses) and changed a few things, but for the most part they were pretty true to the spirit of the story, if not to the letter. The one thing they really misrepresented, I think, was Pollard's relationship with his family. Though they never had the money to come see him race (except his father, once, in a pretty low-rent race), it's apparent that he did keep in touch with them. He named his daughter after his sister. Oh, that's another thing they misrepresented: Pollard and Smith were both married. But those omissions are understandable. Though they do change the tone of the story, their inclusion would have made it far to complicated for a movie.
Anyway, it was fun to get to know the backstory. Seabiscuit is absolutely my son's favorite movie, so I've seen it about six hundred times. And will see it another six or eight hundred times, I'm sure. I wonder if I'll find it more or less interesting now that I've listened to this.
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