Description:
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.
Author bio:
Laura Hillenbrand was born in Fairfax, Virginia on May 15, 1967. She studied at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, but was forced to leave before graduation because she contracted chronic fatigue syndrome. She has been writing about history and thoroughbred racing since 1988 and has been a contributing writer and editor at Equus magazine since 1989. Her work has appeared in many other publications including The New Yorker, American Heritage, ABC Sports Online, Thoroughbred Times, Talk, and The Backstretch. Her 1998 American Heritage article on Seabiscuit won her an Eclipse Award for outstanding feature article. In 2004, she won the National Magazine Award for the New Yorker article, A Sudden… Illness. Her first book Seabiscuit: An American Legend won the Book Sense Nonfiction Book of the Year Award and the William Hill Sports Book of the Year in 2001. She served as a consultant on the Universal Pictures movie Seabiscuit, which was based on her book. Her second book, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, a biography of World War II hero Louis Zamperini, was also made into a movie. She was honored by the Turf Publicists of America for her contributions to the sport of thoroughbred racing with the 36th annual Big Sport of Turfdom award, making her just the fifth woman to win the award.