Seabiscuit: An American Legend
by Laura Hillenbrand

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• # 1 new york times bestseller

Book Reviews of Seabiscuit: An American Legend

Book Review: A Book Befitting Its Subject
Summary: 5 Stars

A blocky-looking horse with an ungainly stride that made him appear to have a perpetual limp, Seabiscuit was descended from the mighty Man O' War through Hard Tack ("Seabiscuit out of Hard Tack" - get it?). After spending his first few years amassing a miserable record on the racing circuit, the colt found a new owner and his fortunes changed. The story of how that unpromising horse became one of the icons of racing, as well as an inspiration to millions of Americans reeling from years of Depression and a looming world war, could be told in a compelling manner by any competent writer. What makes Laura Hillenbrand's narrative so brilliant is her focus on the three men who together discovered and developed Seabiscuit's potential: Charles Howard, a genial auto magnate with an eye for talent and a flair for publicity; Tom Smith, a frontiersman with a genius for understanding and training horses; and Red Pollard, a journeyman jockey who could read "Biscuit" like no one else. The book is meticulously researched; Hillenbrand fills out her account with enough period detail and horseracing lore to make the reader feel as if he's living the story rather than simply reading it. All that detail makes the going a little heavy in the early chapters; but once all the major characters are assembled, Seabiscuit clips along at a gallop.

Some of the most compelling material in the book relates to the everyday lore of horseracing. Chapter 5 for instance, "A Boot on One Foot, a Toe Tag on the Other," deals with the "appalling" life of jockeys in the prewar era. "The jockey lived hard and lean and tended to die young," writes Hillenbrand, "trampled under the hooves of horses or imploding from the pressures of his vocation." Young men who rode racehorses for a living had to maintain such low body weight that they would employ dangerous homemade laxatives and sweat off pounds of water in punishing workouts. Really desperate jockeys would grow tapeworms inside themselves in order to keep their weight down. Consequently, they would often ride in a weakened condition, sick and light-headed, making the acrobatic task of race riding that much more dangerous. And when the inevitable happened, and a jockey went down on the track, there was frequently no ambulance available to take him to the hospital.

Other fascinating industry-related details concern the politics of race handicapping - Seabiscuit, despite his small size, was frequently burdened with 10-25 pounds more handicap weight than his opponents - as well as the peccadillos of certain individuals in the racing community. Hillenbrand is at her most spellbinding, though, when it comes to her descriptions of the races themselves. She puts you right in the saddle, drawing on first-person commentaries from the jockeys involved, painting detailed word-pictures of the crowds, the weather, the track conditions, everything. Like a radio announcer, she leads you through each turn of the course, narrating your moment-to-moment progress, leaving you in suspense as to the outcome until you flash under the wire.

Even if you aren't generally a fan of sports books - and I'm not - I bet you'll enjoy Seabiscuit. I was initially persuaded to buy it when I began seeing exciting trailers from the Universal Studios film based on the book. Now I'm thinking that if the movie comes anywhere near to doing justice to its source material, it should be well worth the price of a ticket.

Summary of 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

20th Century Books

• Subjects > History > Americas > United States > 20th Century
• Sports & Outdoors > Individual Sports > Horses > Racing
• Miscellaneous > History of Sports