Seabiscuit: An American Legend

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Overview
Editorial Reviews
What People Are Saying
Product Details
Related Subjects
Meet the Author
Read an Excerpt
Table of Contents
First Chapter
Foreword
Reading Group Guide

Overview

Seabiscuit was an unlikely champion: a roughhewn, undersized horse with a sad little tail and knees that wouldn't straighten all the way. But, thanks to the efforts of three men, Seabiscuit became one of the most spectacular performers in sports history. The rags-to-riches horse emerged as an American cultural icon, drawing an immense following and becoming the single biggest newsmaker of 1938 -- receiving more coverage than FDR or Hitler. Laura Hillenbrand beautifully renders this story of one horse's journey from also-ran to national luminary.

Second-place winner of Barnes & Noble's 2001 Discover Great New Writers Award for Nonfiction

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Editorial Reviews

From Barnes & Noble

Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers
What, you may ask, is a biography of a famous race horse doing in the Discover program? Well, if you take a look at Seabiscuit -- a good look -- you'll understand. Much as Sebastian Junger did in The Perfect Storm, Laura Hillenbrand has woven together the many strands of lives that improbably create a phenomenon -- in this case, no raging storm, but legendary racing history. The little horse, Seabiscuit, with his crooked legs and sad tail, was at first thought lazy, but with the help of a trinity of men -- his trainer, his owner, and a jockey -- would make racing history and find a place in the hearts of thousands of fans in Depression-era America. Laura Hillenbrand has done what only great writers can do: She has taken a story that in other, less capable hands would be fodder strictly for the racing crowd, and written as dramatic and informative a biography of a horse and of 1938 America as you'll find. When you read this book, an America mired in the Depression and searching for something to believe in comes alive. The faith of those Americans in the little horse with heart will awaken your own, and when you read Seabiscuit's racing scenes, even the most skeptical reader will find themselves jumping up and down, shouting at Seabiscuit to "Run!"

Jim Squires

[T]he story of this ragged-tailed racehorse [is] an allegory for Depression-era America. . . . [Hillenbrand's book] is a flawless trip, with the detail of good history . . . and the charm of grand legend.
— New York Times

Mark Hyman

Hillenbrand, a contributing writer at Equus magazine, is a deft storyteller whose descriptions of such races are especially good, filled with images of pounding hooves and splattering mud.
— Business Week

Deirdre Donahue

Seabiscuit brings alive the drama, the beauty, the louche charm and the brutality of horse racing. Hillenbrand makes the reader understand why Americans, crushed by the Depression, found so much hope, inspiration and pleasure in the story of a small horse who rose from obscurity to become a champion.
— USA Today

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Gifted sportswriter Hillenbrand unearths the rarefied world of thoroughbred horse racing in this captivating account of one of the sport's legends. Though no longer a household name, Seabiscuit enjoyed great celebrity during the 1930s and 1940s, drawing record crowds to his races around the country. Not an overtly impressive physical specimen--"His stubby legs were a study in unsound construction, with huge, squarish, asymmetrical `baseball glove' knees that didn't quite straighten all the way"--the horse seemed to transcend his physicality as he won race after race. Hillenbrand, a contributor to Equus magazine, profiles the major players in Seabiscuit's fantastic and improbable career. In simple, elegant prose, she recounts how Charles Howard, a pioneer in automobile sales and Seabiscuit's eventual owner, became involved with horse racing, starting as a hobbyist and growing into a fanatic. She introduces esoteric recluse Tom Smith (Seabiscuit's trainer) and jockey Red Pollard, a down-on-his-luck rider whose specialty was taming unruly horses. In 1936, Howard united Smith, Pollard and "The Biscuit," whose performance had been spotty--and the horse's star career began. Smith, who recognized Seabiscuit's potential, felt an immediate rapport with him and eased him into shape. Once Seabiscuit started breaking records and outrunning lead horses, reporters thronged the Howard barn day and night. Smith's secret workouts became legendary and only heightened Seabiscuit's mystique. Hillenbrand deftly blends the story with explanations of the sport and its culture, including vivid descriptions of the Tijuana horse-racing scene in all its debauchery. She roots her narrative of the horse's breathtaking career and the wild devotion of his fans in its socioeconomic context: Seabiscuit embodied the underdog myth for a nation recovering from dire economic straits. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

A veteran thoroughbred-racing writer whose stories have appeared in American Heritage, Talk, and other magazines, Hillenbrand here takes readers on a thrilling ride through 341 pages on the back of champion thoroughbred Seabiscuit. This is a Cinderella story in which four creatures, united for a brief period of time (1936-47), spark the imagination of an entire country. Hillenbrand combines the horse's biography with a social history of 1930s and 1940s America and incisive portraits of the team around Seabiscuit. Charlie Howard, a car dealer, bought the crooked-legged, scruffy little horse; Tom Smith, a man who rarely spoke to people but who communicated perfectly with horses, became its trainer; and Red Pollard, a half-blind jockey, rode Seabiscuit to fame. Hillenbrand's extensive research compares favorably with that of Alexander MacKay-Smith's in Speed and the Thoroughbred (Derrydale, 2000). This story of trust, optimism, and perseverance in overcoming obstacles will appeal to many readers. Highly recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/00.] Patsy E. Gray, Huntsville P.L., AL Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

School Library Journal

This well-written and compelling book celebrates the life of a racehorse that just happened to be a descendant of Man O' War. It is a story of a huge talent that almost went unrecognized until the right people came along. According to descriptions, Seabiscuit was a runt, with stubby legs, an odd walk, and a lazy nature. However, he became so popular that he drew more news coverage than President Roosevelt, Hitler, or Mussolini. The atmosphere surrounding his historic match with War Admiral was so intense that FDR kept advisors waiting as he listened with the rest of the country to hear the outcome. Hillenbrand also tells the stories of owner Charles Howard, trainer Tom Smith, and jockey Red Pollard and the part each man played in the recognition and development of a racing legend. But the book is much more. Seabiscuit is a story of the times and it is a story of the hard and dangerous life of a jockey. Even readers with no interest in the sport will be hooked with the opening sentence of the book's preface. Hillenbrand does a wonderful job in bringing an unlikely winner to life.-Peggy Bercher, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The former editor of Equus magazine retells the riveting story of an unlikely racehorse that became an American obsession during the Depression. Like all heroes of an epic, Seabiscuit had to endure setbacks, dispel doubts about his abilities, and contend with formidable rivals. Hillenbrand deftly mixes arcane horse lore with a narrative as compelling as any adventure yarn as she introduces first the men who would make Seabiscuit great and then the horse himself. Racing was a popular, often unregulated sport in the 1930s, and wealthy men like Bing Crosby and his friend Charles Howard, who became Seabiscuit's owner, fielded strings of horses all over the country. Howard, a sucker for lost causes, took on as his trainer Tom Smith, a taciturn westerner down on his luck who studied horses for days until he took their measure. Both men were well suited to invest emotionally and financially in Seabiscuit, as were the two jockeys who would be associated with him, Red Pollard and George Woolf. Howard first saw Seabiscuit racing in 1936. The colt was a descendant of the famous Man o' War, but his body was stunted, his legs stubby, and he walked with an odd gait. Smith believed he had potential, however, so Howard bought him and took him back to California. There Smith patiently worked on Seabiscuit's strengths, corrected his weaknesses, and encouraged his ability to run faster than any other horse. When Smith thought he was ready, Howard began racing the colt. Seabiscuit broke numerous track records, despite accidents, injuries, and even foul play. His fame was secured with a 1938 race against his rival, War Admiral; their contest divided the country into two camps and garnered more media coverage than President Roosevelt, who himself was so riveted by the race that he kept advisers waiting while he listened to the broadcast. A great ride.

From the Publisher

“Fascinating . . . Vivid . . . A first-rate piece of storytelling, leaving us not only with a vivid portrait of a horse but a fascinating slice of American history as well.”
–The New York Times

“Engrossing . . . Fast-moving . . . More than just a horse’s tale, because the humans who owned, trained, and rode Seabiscuit are equally fascinating. . . . [Hillenbrand] shows an extraordinary talent for describing a horse race so vividly that the reader feels like the rider.”
–Sports Illustrated

“REMARKABLE . . . MEMORABLE . . . JUST AS COMPELLING TODAY AS IT WAS IN 1938.”
–The Washington Post

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Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780449005613
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Publication date: 3/28/2002
Series: Ballantine Reader's Circle Series
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 399
Sales rank: 59,106
Lexile: 990L (what's this?)
Product dimensions: 5.50 (w) x 8.18 (h) x 0.89 (d)

Meet the Author

Laura Hillenbrand has been writing about Thoroughbred racing since 1988 and has been a contributing writer/editor for Equus magazine since 1989. Her work has also appeared in American Heritage, ABC Sports Online, The Blood-Horse, Thoroughbred Times, The Backstretch, Turf and Sport Digest and many other publications. Her 1998 American Heritage article on Seabiscuit won the Eclipse Award for Magazine Writing, the highest award for Thoroughbred racing. She is currently serving as a consultant on a Universal Studios movie based on this book. Born in Fairfax, Virginia, Laura lives in Washington, D.C.

Biography

Laura Hillenbrand has been writing about history and Thoroughbred racing since 1988 and has been a contributing writer/editor for Equus magazine since 1989. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, Talk, American Heritage, Reader's Digest, ABC Sports Online, The New York Post, The Week, Attache, The Blood-Horse, Thoroughbred Times, The Backstretch, and many other publications.

Her 1998 American Heritage article on Seabiscuit won the Eclipse Award for Magazine Writing, the highest journalistic award for Thoroughbred racing.

She served as a consultant on the Universal Pictures movie based on Seabiscuit as well as a PBS documentary on Seabiscuit's life. An alumna of Kenyon College, Laura lives in Washington, D.C.

Author biography courtesy of Random House, Inc.

Good To Know

Days after Hillenbrand's literary agent first put out a proposal for Seabiscuit to publishers in August 1998, a Hollywood producer called her to talk movie rights; she hadn't written a word of the book yet.

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1. Hometown:
  
  Washington, D.C.
1. Date of Birth:
  
  May 15, 1967
2. Place of Birth:
  
  Fairfax, Virginia
1. Education:
  
  B.A., Kenyon College

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One: The Day of the Horse is Past

Charles Howard had the feel of a gigantic onrushing machine: You had to either climb on or leap out of the way. He would sweep into a room, working a cigarette in his fingers, and people would trail him like pilot fish. They couldn't help themselves. Fifty-eight years old in 1935, Howard was a tall, glowing man in a big suit and a very big Buick. But it wasn't his physical bearing that did it. He lived on a California ranch so huge that a man could take a wrong turn on it and be lost forever, but it wasn't his circumstances either. Nor was it that he spoke loud or long; the surprise of the man was his understatement, the quiet and kindly intimacy of his acquaintance. What drew people to him was something intangible, an air about him. There was a certain inevitability to Charles Howard, an urgency radiating from him that made people believe that the world was always going to bend to his wishes.

On an afternoon in 1903, long before the big cars and the ranch and all the money, Howard began his adulthood with only that air of destiny and 21 cents in his pocket. He sat in the swaying belly of a transcontinental train, snaking west from New York. He was twenty-six, handsome, gentlemanly, with a bounding imagination. Back then he had a lot more hair than anyone who knew him later would have guessed. Years in the saddles of military-school horses had taught him to carry his six-foot-one-inch frame straight up. He was eastern born and bred, but he had a westerner's restlessness. He had tried to satisfy it by enlisting in the cavalry for the Spanish-American War, and though he became a skilled horseman, thanks to bad timing and dysentery he never got out of Camp Wheeler in Alabama. After his discharge, he got a job in New York as a bicycle mechanic, took up competitive bicycle racing, got married, and had two sons. It seems to have been a good life, but the East stifled Howard. His mind never seemed to settle down. His ambitions had fixed upon the vast new America on the other side of the Rockies. That day in 1903 he couldn't resist the impulse anymore. He left everything he'd ever known behind, promised his wife Fannie May he'd send for her soon, and got on the train.

He got off in San Francisco. His two dimes and a penny couldn't carry him far, but somehow he begged and borrowed enough money to open a little bicycle-repair shop on Van Ness Avenue downtown. He tinkered with the bikes and waited for something interesting to come his way.

It came in the form of a string of distressed-looking men who began appearing at his door.

Eccentric souls with too much money in their pockets and far too much time on their hands, they had blown thick wads of cash on preposterous machines called automobiles. Some of them were feeling terribly sorry about it.

The horseless carriage was just arriving in San Francisco, and its debut was turning into one of those colorfully unmitigated disasters that bring misery to everyone but historians. Consumers were staying away from the "devilish contraptions" in droves. The men who had invested in them were the subjects of cautionary tales, derision, and a fair measure of public loathing. In San Francisco in 1903, the horse and buggy was not going the way of the horse and buggy.

For good reason. The automobile, so sleekly efficient on paper, was in practice a civic menace, belching out exhaust, kicking up storms of dust, becoming hopelessly mired in the most innocuous-looking puddles, tying up horse traffic, and raising an earsplitting cacophony that sent buggy horses fleeing. Incensed local lawmakers responded with monuments to legislative creativity. The laws of at least one town required automobile drivers to stop, get out, and fire off Roman candles every time horse-drawn vehicles came into view. Massachusetts tried and, fortunately, failed to mandate that cars be equipped with bells that would ring with each revolution of the wheels. In some towns police were authorized to disable passing cars with ropes, chains, wires, and even bullets, so long as they took reasonable care to avoid gunning down the drivers. San Francisco didn't escape the legislative wave. Bitter local officials pushed through an ordinance banning automobiles from the Stanford campus and all tourist areas, effectively exiling them from the city.

Nor were these the only obstacles. The asking price for the cheapest automobile amounted to twice the $500 annual salary of the average citizen‹some cost three times that much‹and all that bought you was four wheels, a body, and an engine. "Accessories" like bumpers, carburetors, and headlights had to be purchased separately. Just starting the thing, through hand cranking, could land a man in traction. With no gas stations, owners had to lug five-gallon fuel cans to local drugstores, filling them for 60 cents a gallon and hoping the pharmacist wouldn't substitute benzene for gasoline. Doctors warned women away from automobiles, fearing slow suffocation in noxious fumes. A few adventurous members of the gentler sex took to wearing ridiculous "windshield hats," watermelon-sized fabric balloons, equipped with little glass windows, that fit over the entire head, leaving ample room for corpulent Victorian coiffures. Navigation was another nightmare. The first of San Francisco's road signs were only just being erected, hammered up by an enterprising insurance underwriter who hoped to win clients by posting directions into the countryside, whose drivers retreated for automobile "picnic parties" held out of the view of angry townsfolk.

Finally, driving itself was something of a touch-and-go pursuit. The first automobiles imported to San Francisco had so little power that they rarely made it up the hills. The grade of Nineteenth Avenue was so daunting for the engines of the day that watching automobiles straining for the top became a local pastime. The automobiles' delicate constitutions and general faintheartedness soon became a source of scorn. One cartoon from the era depicted a wealthy couple standing on a roadside next to its dearly departed vehicle. The caption read, "The Idle Rich."...

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	Preface	11
Part I
1.	The Day of the Horse Is Past	17
2.	The Lone Plainsman	41
3.	Mean, Restive, and Ragged	58
4.	The Cougar and the Iceman	83
5.	A Boot on One Foot, a Toe Tag on the Other	106
6.	Light and Shadow	131
Part II
7.	Learn Your Horse	153
8.	Fifteen Strides	172
9.	Gravity	192
10.	War Admiral	212
11.	No Pollard, No Seabiscuit	233
12.	All I Need Is Luck	258
13.	Hardball	277
14.	The Wise We Boys	298
15.	Fortune's Fool	323
16.	I Know My Horse	338
17.	The Dingbustingest Contest You Ever Clapped an Eye On	351
18.	Deal	366
19.	The Second Civil War	384
Part III
20.	"All Four of His Legs Are Broken"	407
21.	A Long, Hard Pull	425
22.	Four Good Legs Between Us	434
23.	One Hundred Grand	452
	Epilogue	467
	Acknowledgments	484
	Notes	497

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First Chapter

THE DAY OF THE HORSE IS PAST

Charles Howard had the feel of a gigantic onrushing machine: You had to either climb on or leap out of the way. He would sweep into a room, working a cigarette in his fingers, and people would trail him like pilot fish. They couldn’t help themselves. Fifty-eight years old in 1935, Howard was a tall, glowing man in a big suit and a very big Buick. But it wasn’t his physical bearing that did it. He lived on a California ranch so huge that a man could take a wrong turn on it and be lost forever, but it wasn’t his circumstances either. Nor was it that he spoke loud or long; the surprise of the man was his understatement, the quiet and kindly intimacy of his acquaintance. What drew people to him was something intangible, an air about him. There was a certain inevitability to Charles Howard, an urgency radiating from him that made people believe that the world was always going to bend to his wishes.

On an afternoon in 1903, long before the big cars and the ranch and all
the money, Howard began his adulthood with only that air of destiny and
21 cents in his pocket. He sat in the swaying belly of a transcontinental
train, snaking west from New York. He was twenty-six, handsome, gentle-manly, with a bounding imagination. Back then he had a lot more hair than
anyone who knew him later would have guessed. Years in the saddles of
military-school horses had taught him to carry his six-foot-one-inch frame
straight up.

He was eastern born and bred, but he had a westerner’s restlessness.
He had tried to satisfy it by enlisting in the cavalry for the Spanish-American War, and though he became a skilledhorseman, thanks to bad
timing and dysentery he never got out of Camp Wheeler in Alabama. After
his discharge, he got a job in New York as a bicycle mechanic, took up
competitive bicycle racing, got married, and had two sons. It seems to have been a good life, but the East stifled Howard. His mind never seemed to
settle down. His ambitions had fixed upon the vast new America on the
other side of the Rockies. That day in 1903 he couldn’t resist the impulse
anymore. He left everything he’d ever known behind, promised his wife
Fannie May he’d send for her soon, and got on the train.

He got off in San Francisco. His two dimes and a penny couldn’t carry
him far, but somehow he begged and borrowed enough money to open a
little bicycle-repair shop on Van Ness Avenue downtown. He tinkered
with the bikes and waited for something interesting to come his way.

It came in the form of a string of distressed-looking men who began appearing at his door. Eccentric souls with too much money in their pockets
and far too much time on their hands, they had blown thick wads of cash
on preposterous machines called automobiles. Some of them were feeling
terribly sorry about it.

The horseless carriage was just arriving in San Francisco, and its debut
was turning into one of those colorfully unmitigated disasters that bring
misery to everyone but historians. Consumers were staying away from the
“devilish contraptions” in droves. The men who had invested in them
were the subjects of cautionary tales, derision, and a fair measure of public loathing. In San Francisco in 1903, the horse and buggy was not going the
way of the horse and buggy.

For good reason. The automobile, so sleekly efficient on paper, was in
practice a civic menace, belching out exhaust, kicking up storms of dust,
becoming hopelessly mired in the most innocuous-looking puddles, tying
up horse traffic, and raising an earsplitting cacophony that sent buggy
horses fleeing. Incensed local lawmakers responded with monuments to
legislative creativity. The laws of at least one town required automobile
drivers to stop, get out, and fire off Roman candles every time horse-drawn vehicles came into view. Massachusetts tried and, fortunately, failed to
mandate that cars be equipped with bells that would ring with each revo-
lution of the wheels. In some towns police were authorized to disable passing cars with ropes, chains, wires, and even bullets, so long as they took
reasonable care to avoid gunning down the drivers. San Francisco didn’t
escape the legislative wave. Bitter local officials pushed through an ordinance banning automobiles from the Stanford campus and all tourist
areas, effectively exiling them from the city.

Nor were these the only obstacles. The asking price for the cheapest
automobile amounted to twice the $500 annual salary of the average citizen— some cost three times that much—and all that bought you was four
wheels, a body, and an engine. “Accessories” like bumpers, carburetors,
and headlights had to be purchased separately. Just starting the thing,
through hand cranking, could land a man in traction. With no gas stations,
owners had to lug five-gallon fuel cans to local drugstores, filling them for
60 cents a gallon and hoping the pharmacist wouldn’t substitute benzene
for gasoline. Doctors warned women away from automobiles, fearing slow
suffocation in noxious fumes. A few adventurous members of the gentler
sex took to wearing ridiculous “windshield hats,” watermelon-sized fabric
balloons, equipped with little glass windows, that fit over the entire head,
leaving ample room for corpulent Victorian coiffures. Navigation was another nightmare. The first of San Francisco’s road signs were only just
being erected, hammered up by an enterprising insurance underwriter
who hoped to win clients by posting directions into the countryside,
whose drivers retreated for automobile “picnic parties” held out of the
view of angry townsfolk.

Finally, driving itself was something of a touch-and-go pursuit. The
first automobiles imported to San Francisco had so little power that they
rarely made it up the hills. The grade of Nineteenth Avenue was so daunting for the engines of the day that watching automobiles straining for the
top became a local pastime. The automobiles’ delicate constitutions and
general faintheartedness soon became a source of scorn. One cartoon from the era depicted a wealthy couple standing on a roadside next to its dearly
departed vehicle. The caption read, “The Idle Rich.”

Where San Franciscans saw an urban nuisance, Charles Howard saw
opportunity. Automobile-repair shops hadn’t been created yet—and
would have made little sense anyway as few were fool enough to buy a car.
Owners had no place to go when their cars expired. A bicycle repairman
was the closest thing to an auto mechanic available, and Howard’s shop
was conveniently close to the neighborhoods of wealthy car owners.
Howard hadn’t been in town long before the owners began showing up on
his doorstep.

Howard had a weakness for lost causes. He accepted the challenge,
poked around in the cars, and figured out how to fix them. Soon he was
showing up at the primitive automobile races held around the city. Before
long, he was driving in them. The first American race, run around
Evanston, Illinois, had been held only eight years before, with the winning
car ripping along at the dizzying average speed of seven and a half miles
per hour. But by 1903, automotive horsepower had greatly improved—
one car averaged 65.3 mph in a cross-European race that season—making
the races a good spectacle. It also made for astronomical casualty rates.
The European race, for one, turned into such a godawful bloodletting that
it was ultimately halted due to “too many fatalities.”

Howard was beginning to see these contraptions as the instrument of
his ambition. Taking an audacious step, he booked a train east, got off in
Detroit, and somehow talked his way into a meeting with Will Durant,
chief of Buick Automobiles and future founder of General Motors.
Howard told Durant that he wanted to be a part of the industry, troubled
though it was. Durant liked what he saw and hired him to set up dealerships
and recruit dealers. Howard returned to San Francisco, opened the
Pioneer Motor Company on Buick’s behalf, and hired a local man to manage
it. But on a checkup visit, he was dismayed to find that the manager
was focusing his sales effort not on Buicks but on ponderous Thomas Flyers. Howard went back to Detroit and told Durant that he could do better.
Durant was sold. Howard walked away with the Buick franchise for all of
San Francisco. It was 1905, and he was just twenty-eight years old.

Howard returned to San Francisco by train with three Buicks in tow.
By some accounts, he first housed his automobiles in the parlor of his old
bicycle-repair shop on Van Ness Avenue before moving to a modest building
on Golden Gate Avenue, half a block from Van Ness. He brought Fannie
May out to join him. With two young boys to feed, and two more soon
to follow, Fannie May must have been alarmed by her husband’s career
choice. Two years had done little to pacify the San Franciscan hostility for
the automobile. Howard failed to sell a single car.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

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Foreword

1. Seabiscuit grew so popular as a cultural icon that in 1938, he commanded
more space in American newspapers than any other public
figure. Considering the temper of the times as well as the horse’s
early career on the racetrack, what were the sources of The Biscuit’s
enormous popularity during that benchmark period of U.S. history?
Would he be as popular if he raced today? What did the public need
that it found in this horse?

2. The Great Match Race between Seabiscuit and War Admiral in 1938
evoked heated partisan passions. These passions spilled over on
radio and into the daily prints, with each colt leading a raucous
legion of followers to the barrier at Pimlico Race Course that autumn
day. What were the differences separating these two horses, and
what did each competitor represent in the American experience that
set one apart from the other?

3. All jockeys in the 1930s endured terrible hardships and hazards,
starving themselves to make weight, then competing in an exceptionally
dangerous sport. For George Woolf and Red Pollard, there
were additional factors that compounded the difficulties and dangers
of their jobs—diabetes for the former and half-blindness for the
latter. Why, in spite of this, did they go on with their careers? What
were the allures of race riding that led them to subject themselves to
such risk and torment?

4. What was the role of the press and radio in the Seabiscuit phenomenon?
How did Howard use the media to his advantage? How did
the media help Seabiscuit’s career, and how was it a hindrance?

5. Seabiscuit possessed all the qualities forwhich the Thoroughbred
has been prized since the English imported the breed’s three foundation
sires from the Middle East three hundred years ago. What
were those qualities? What made this horse a winner?

6. Horses of Seabiscuit’s stature, from Man o’ War in the 1920s to
Cigar in the 1990s, have always generated a powerful gravitational
field of their own, attracting crowds of people into their immediate
orbit, shaping relationships among them, and even affecting the
personalities of those nearest them. How did Seabiscuit shape and
influence the lives of those around him?

7. Red Pollard, Tom Smith, and Charles Howard formed an unlikely
partnership. In what ways were these men different? How did their
differences serve as an asset to them?

8. What critical attribute did Howard, Smith, and Pollard share? How
did this shared attribute serve as a key to their success?

9. In what ways was each man in the Seabiscuit partnership similar, in
his own way, to Seabiscuit himself? How did these similarities help
them cultivate the horse’s talents and cure his ailments and neuroses?

10. What lessons can be drawn from the successes of the Seabiscuit
team? What does their story say about the role of character in life?

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Reading Group Guide

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.

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Overview

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Seabiscuit: An American Legend

Overview

Pick Up In Store

Available on NOOK devices and apps Nook Devices NOOK HD/HD+ Tablet NOOK NOOK Color NOOK Tablet Tablet/Phone NOOK for Windows 8 Tablet NOOK for iOS NOOK for Android NOOK Kids for iPad PC/Mac NOOK for Windows 8 NOOK for PC NOOK for Mac NOOK Study NOOK for Web

All Available Formats & Editions

Customers Who Bought This Also Bought

More About This Book

Overview

Editorial Reviews

From Barnes & Noble

Jim Squires

Mark Hyman

Deirdre Donahue

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Library Journal

School Library Journal

Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

Product Details

Related Subjects

Meet the Author

Biography

Good To Know

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One: The Day of the Horse is Past

Table of Contents

First Chapter

Foreword

Reading Group Guide

Customer Reviews

5 Star

4 Star

3 Star

2 Star

1 Star

Your Rating:

Your Recommendations:

Barnes & Noble.com Review Rules

Reviews by Our Customers Under the Age of 13

What to exclude from your review:

Reviews should not contain any of the following:

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Recommend other products that relate to your review. Just search for them below and share!

BEST BOOK IN THE WORLD!!!!!

A Heartening and Inspirational Tale YOU can NOT miss!

From the horses mouth..

Wonderfully researched.

Good read.

Heart racing.

Enjoyed every word!!!!

Spellbinding

Excellent, Fanstatic, Captiving

Ok

Really great book, but not a childrens book, no way

Awsome book

Very inspirational, Definitely worth it

Great fun to read and good history.

Can't Wait for the Movie!

Seabiscuit Lives On

Could Not Put It Down

Excellent

Good book!!

Seabiscuit was the story of a unique champion. Tom Smith, Red Po

Available on NOOK devices and apps

Nook Devices

NOOK HD/HD+ Tablet

NOOK

NOOK Color

NOOK Tablet

Tablet/Phone

NOOK for Windows 8 Tablet

NOOK for iOS

NOOK for Android

NOOK Kids for iPad

PC/Mac

NOOK for Windows 8

NOOK for PC

NOOK for Mac

NOOK Study

NOOK for Web