Seabiscuit
by Laura Hillenbrand
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Book Summary Information
Author: Laura HillenbrandReader: Campbell Scott
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Format: Abridged, Audiobook
Published: 2003-06-05
ISBN: 0739306391
Publisher: Random House Audio
Book Reviews of Seabiscuit
Book Review: LONG LIVE THE GREAT HORSE SEABISCUIT
Summary: 4 Stars
Seabiscuit was a great book. I've never been so caught up on a historical figure. This book didn't tell me just about the horse, it told me everything about that time in the 1930's. I learned about automobiles, how jockeys lose weight, Great Depression, and many other intresting things. I was quite amazed about how such a disfigured horse could be such a perfect horse with the help of such unordinary characters. It really toched me. The three people that helped Seabiscuit are,Charles Howard,Tom Smith, Red Pollard. Charles Howard,who was quite poor and opened an bicycle repair shop, which soon turned to a automobile lot. He made a lot of money with the selling of the automobiles, so he decided he should buy a horse. He bought a few cheap horses who were not very good, but he needed a trainer, he found Tom Smith, an old mustang breaker, who no one really knew that he was such a great trainer. He talked to Seabiscuit, slept next to him every night, he kept Seabiscuit on a special diet, took Seabiscuit at night for special workouts. Seabiscuit only trusted Tom Smith to take care of him.Red Pollard, Seabiscuit's jockey, was skinny and tall for a jockey. He was half-blind in one eye, due to riding one day and getting a piece of rock kicked in his eye. Red never told anyone about this, scared that if he did, they may get hid of him. As a child, his family was very rich, his dad founded a town, and owned a brick factory, a flood washed away everything they had. Red had dreamed of being a jockey, his family sent his away with a family friend to fulfill that dream. That family friend disappered, and Red was left with no money and no where to go. Red tried to earn money boxing with other jockeys, but he wasn't very athletic. He was always reading books, so he was very smart. A few owners asked Red to ride, but he did ok but not good enough to win any money. Tom Smith, spotted Red and thought he had potential. Tom Smith found Seabiscuit one day at a race, he showed Charles Howard, he thought Seabiscuit was great. They bought Seabiscuit for $7, 500. He did good, in 1937, he won the Huntington Beach Handicap, a big race back then.Later, he was beaten by a nose in the Santa Anita Handicap by Rosemount, a great horse. After that loss, he went on a winning streak, winning 10 out of 11 races. He won five handicaps. He was voted champion older horse and he was the leading money-earning thoroughbred in 1937. His record for the year: 11 wins in 15 starts that's 168,580 dollars. Seabiscuit beat War Admiral, the best horse at the time. That was to be considered as the biggest horse race at the time. Seabiscuit continued to ride for two more years, continously winning, then retired after he became a bit weak. Seven years after he retired, he died. Everyone had heard of Seabiscuit, even I, before I had heard about the book or movie. Making a movie and book out of it was a great idea, I was inspired by Seabiscuit, really. I loved the book, even though the words were heard to understand, and they went on forever about every little thing, it was good.
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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