Seabiscuit. Laura Hillenbrand.

Seabiscuit: An American Legend
Laura Hillenbrand
New York: Ballantine Books, 2001.

Why read it? You will have a hard time putting it down. My first impression is that the people who know horses treat them as individuals. Treating horses as individuals was important to the success of Seabiscuit, who would have resisted working for anyone who did not recognize his personal traits, his toughness, his heart, his rebelliousness, his determination and the absolute need never to use the whip. Tom Smith was a horse training genius who studied his horses, notably Seabiscuit, to learn what he could about them as individuals.

Some ideas from the book: The author saw these four men—Charles Howard, the owner of a horse that had been labeled a rogue; Tom Smith, the laconic and taciturn trainer, who studied and understood the personality of the horses he trained; Red Pollard, the hard-luck, former boxer, literature-quoting jockey and George Woolf, the alternate jockey when Pollard was injured, who also communicated with Seabiscuit and who had developed a technique for preparing for a race, visualizing the race, that is useful in situations beyond horse racing—as a unique combination that came together to make Seabiscuit a legend in horse racing.

Then I learned what a hard lot the jockey had, inevitably doomed to serious injury, forced to practically starve himself to maintain the least amount of weight, the battles between jockeys in running races, the blatant fouls. Horse racing is a tough profession.

And then I learned about Laura Hillenbrand, the author, whose bout with food poisoning led to chronic fatigue syndrome and vertigo that resulted in her losing contact with society and to her writing career, through which she desired to leave something behind for people to remember her. Her story of Seabiscuit is exceptionally well written and carries the reader along, one exciting characterization and incident after another. The characters she portrayed and her own character should live long beyond her.

Quote: “War Admiral won’t outbreak Seabiscuit; he won’t outgame him, and he won’t beat him.”

Quote: Laura Hillenbrand: “I just wanted to tell this story. The thing I will look back on with the most pleasure is the fact that these men and this horse are remembered again. They deserve to be.”