Seabiscuit

Seabiscuit
by Laura Hillenbrand

Seabiscuit
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Book Summary Information

Author: Laura Hillenbrand
Reader: Campbell Scott
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Format: Abridged, Audiobook
Published: 2003-06-05
ISBN: 0739306391
Publisher: Random House Audio

Book Reviews of Seabiscuit

Book Review: Stunning Story, Fabulously Researched
Summary: 5 Stars

Seabiscuit follows the gradual rise of an underdeveloped horse born of grand breading. With no expectations of greatness thrust upon him, Seabiscuit enters a life of racing mediocrity. Slowly, his anger gestates as he is forced to lose to lesser horses in training to build their confidence. Eventually his life comes into confluence with a quixotic entrepreneur recovering from a personal disaster, a down-on-his-luck trainer with natural talent, and one of the tallest but most dedicated jockeys in the league. Together this unlikely but somehow perfect team take Seabiscuit to the greatest heights of horse racing, at the time the most popular sport in the United States. Along the way, their journey takes on grander scope than just personal redemption. They become a much needed beacon of triumph and personal renewal for American emotionally wasted by the throes of the Great Depression.

The story is excellently researched, well crafted, and favors reality to fairy tale endings. Each of the characters is presented in written detail akin to HD TV. Hillenbrand should patent HD Words.

Many times a book is not worth reading after seeing the movie (i.e. Twilight), which is a shame because a good book can greatly enlighten the backstory that doesn't come across in moving pictures. Seabiscuit thankfully makes the reading as well as the watching equally worthwhile regardless of the order they are undertaken.

Summary of Seabiscuit

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.

Author Laura Hillenbrand brilliantly re-creates a universal underdog story, one that proves life is a horse race.


From the Hardcover edition.
He didn't look like much. With his smallish stature, knobby knees, and slightly crooked forelegs, he looked more like a cow pony than a thoroughbred. But looks aren't everything; his quality, an admirer once wrote, "was mostly in his heart." Laura Hillenbrand tells the story of the horse who became a cultural icon in Seabiscuit: An American Legend.

Seabiscuit rose to prominence with the help of an unlikely triumvirate: owner Charles Howard, an automobile baron who once declared that "the day of the horse is past"; trainer Tom Smith, a man who "had cultivated an almost mystical communication with horses"; and jockey Red Pollard, who was down on his luck when he charmed a then-surly horse with his calm demeanor and a sugar cube. Hillenbrand details the ups and downs of "team Seabiscuit," from early training sessions to record-breaking victories, and from serious injury to "Horse of the Year"--as well as the Biscuit's fabled rivalry with War Admiral. She also describes the world of horseracing in the 1930s, from the snobbery of Eastern journalists regarding Western horses and public fascination with the great thoroughbreds to the jockeys' torturous weight-loss regimens, including saunas in rubber suits, strong purgatives, even tapeworms.

Along the way, Hillenbrand paints wonderful images: tears in Tom Smith's eyes as his hero, legendary trainer James Fitzsimmons, asked to hold Seabiscuit's bridle while the horse was saddled; critically injured Red Pollard, whose chest was crushed in a racing accident a few weeks before, listening to the San Antonio Handicap from his hospital bed, cheering "Get going, Biscuit! Get 'em, you old devil!"; Seabiscuit happily posing for photographers for several minutes on end; other horses refusing to work out with Seabiscuit because he teased and taunted them with his blistering speed.

Though sometimes her prose takes on a distinctly purple hue ("His history had the ethereal quality of hoofprints in windblown snow"; "The California sunlight had the pewter cast of a declining season"), Hillenbrand has crafted a delightful book. Wire to wire, Seabiscuit is a winner. Highly recommended. --Sunny Delaney

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