New arrival
Seabiscuit
The Sports Plus take
The underdog racehorse of the Depression.
In 1938 a crooked-legged racehorse named Seabiscuit drew more press coverage than FDR. Laura Hillenbrand, who later wrote Unbroken, tells how three long shots built him into a champion: a bicycle repairman turned car millionaire, a mysterious mustang breaker from the Colorado plains, and a half-blind jockey who quoted Emerson. It's a true story that reads like a novel, and it became the 2003 film.
Shelf
How it reads
Moderate
Best for
- Readers of Unbroken
- History lovers
- Anyone who loves an underdog story
About this book
- Author
- Laura Hillenbrand
- Publisher
- Ballantine Books
- Published
- March 26, 2002
- Format
- Paperback
- Pages
- 448
- ISBN-10
- 0449005615
- ISBN-13
- 978-0449005613
Book description
From the author of Unbroken, the underdog story of the horse who came out of nowhere to become a legend.
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.
About the author
Laura Hillenbrand has written about Thoroughbred racing since 1988, for Equus, American Heritage, The Blood-Horse and many other publications. Her 1998 American Heritage article on Seabiscuit won the Eclipse Award for Magazine Writing. She is also the author of Unbroken.
