Category: Book Reviews

Book Review: False Riches (John Paul Miller)

5/23/2024

Fiction is not usually on the agenda at American Classic Pedigrees, but every now and then it's worth making an exception. For those who like relaxing with a good racetrack yarn, you could do much worse than to pick up a copy of John Paul Miller's False Riches (2023, Palmetto Publishing). A combination of mystery, romance, and fictional exploration of timely issues in the horse racing world, this debut novel combines taut pacing and action with a realistic but sympathetic view of the problems and issues of conscience facing its major characters, who constitute a slice of the ordinary people who make horse racing run at a minor track. It is also, oddly, a novel about grace and forgiveness, which may sound incongruous but is in fact an important theme in the development of the book's characters.

I won't provide any spoilers here, but if you're looking for an intriguing read that explores complex and controversial ideas through the lens of imperfect people trying to navigate a morally murky situation---without sounding preachy---then False Riches may be just what you're looking for as an addition to your summer reading list.

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Book Review: No Snail (David Owen)

2/8/2024

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At first glance, the worlds inhabited by the American flat racer Seabiscuit and the Irish steeplechaser L’Escargot seem as far apart as the two sides of the Atlantic, with the width of North America thrown in for good measure. Flat racing is faster-paced in every way, with more speed throughout each race and, until recently, far more races packed into each season. When the flat racer is a prospective stallion, every race at the upper levels takes a chance with a horse’s reputation as well as with injury, and it is a rare entire campaigner that, like Seabiscuit, is still racing at the top level at the age of seven—an age at which steeplechasers, usually geldings, are often considered to be just coming into their full powers after several years of learning their business over long miles of fences.

As recounted in Laura Hillenbrand’s Seabiscuit: An American Hero (2001, Ballantine Publishing Group), Seabiscuit was the idol of his time in the United States. L’Escargot (“the snail” in French), though popular, never achieved the same level of acclaim, often seeming damned with faint praise for having toppled horses still dearer to the public’s heart. Yet these two champions share a common theme to their careers: the story of a quest achieved late in their racing lives. For Seabiscuit, it was the rich Santa Anita Handicap, a race that had eluded him by the narrowest of margins twice before and which he won on a comeback from potentially career-ending injury as well as disappointment. For L’Escargot, it was the Grand National Steeplechase at Aintree, perhaps the steeplechase world’s most brutal test and one he had essayed three times before coming home in triumph at the expense of the legendary Red Rum. This is the tale behind David Owen’s No Snail: The Story of L’Escargot, the Horse that Foiled Red Rum (2023, Fairfield Books).

I will confess right here that I am probably not the best reviewer for Owen’s work, being only loosely acquainted with European racing and scarcely acquainted at all with the world of steeplechasing. Although he has done a good job with the placement of notes to provide extra information, there are undoubtedly nuances in Owen’s narrative that someone familiar with English and Irish steeplechasing would catch and savor but that are lost on me. Nonetheless, there is plenty here to provide a portal to the world of jumps racing, so that the reader can sense something of the minds of those engaged in this demanding yet strangely unhurried sport. As an example, to someone familiar with American flat racing, a tenth-place finish in a major stakes race in a horse’s second or third season of competition would hardly seem encouraging; Owen shows that to a steeplechase trainer “across the pond,” the same finish might represent a good learning experience for the horse or even a triumph of sorts, depending on the experience and condition of the horse and the severity of the test. The narrative also brings home how much the life of an English or Irish jumps racer is at the mercy of the elements of winter and early spring, far more so than is generally the case here in the milder climates and more manicured tracks of Southern California and Florida; small wonder that the atmosphere of jumps racing seems pervaded with more patience and flexibility than often seems part of the flat-racing scene.

Owen does an excellent job of bringing the reader into the process of bringing a top hurdling or ‘chasing prospect along to championship level, and the story of L’Escargot’s rise to the top of his sport is nicely counterpointed by the story of owner Raymond Guest’s long-running campaign to capture a prize that had held his imagination for decades. Another compelling story within the narrative is that of Dan Moore in finally winning steeplechasing’s ultimate race as trainer after being narrowly denied the honors as jockey thirty-seven years earlier. If there is any disappointment to be found in the work, it is that L’Escargot himself does not emerge as a character in his own right to the extent that Seabiscuit did with Hillenbrand, though perhaps this reflects cultural differences in how animals’ personalities and mentalities are viewed as much as it does personal differences between the two writers. Still, that is a small fault (if fault it is) compared to the overall quality of the work. Overall, I found No Snail to be an interesting and well-paced read and one well worth adding to the library of any racing enthusiast.

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Book Review: Isaac Murphy (Katherine Murphy)

12/21/2023

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After our deaths, most of us are remembered mostly by our friends and loved ones. A few who have achieved greater fame outlast living memory, becoming known to later generations through archived news articles, preserved letters, journals, and books; yet even then, most survive in memory as only a portrait composed of a few facts and stories that are continually repeated.

So it is with Isaac Murphy. The portrait that has survived is one of a man who was both a superstar athlete—one who could be called America’s first nationally known sports hero, and a man still regarded by many as the greatest jockey ever to ride in North America—and a paragon of modesty, restraint, and quiet dignity in his public demeanor. He was also Black. That fact passes with bare mention nowadays, yet little is known of how his heritage and experiences as a Black man one generation removed from slavery affected his upbringing, his thinking, and the public demeanor that he chose to adopt. Equally little is known of the Black racing community in which he learned his craft and to which he remained connected throughout his life—a community in which many were respected by whites for their skills but not as fellow human beings and fellow citizens.

Katherine C. Mooney’s biography Isaac Murphy: The Rise and Fall of a Black Jockey (2023, Yale University Press) takes us back into the period he lived in, which spanned the decades following the end of the Civil War up into the Gilded Age. Slavery was officially ended, but in the brave new world of postwar race relations, both Blacks and whites wrestled painfully with what it meant to both races to shape a new political and legal reality from attitudes and patterns of life carried over from a time when the heavy majority of Blacks in the United States were legally owned by whites.

Murphy did not leave personal letters or journals testifying to what he thought regarding these matters, and what he chose to say in public was carefully considered in light of his need to maintain his professional image and his employment. To her credit, Mooney does not presume to speak for him. Instead, she focuses on bringing to light the web of relationships in which he lived and his status as the most iconic member of a Black community that had a degree of prosperity and respectability but at the same time faced ongoing legal disabilities, varying degrees of racism, and the need to maintain at least some degree of goodwill from the wealthy whites on whom their professions depended. Mooney also explores the other difficult reality of Murphy’s life: the burden of being in a profession which placed ever-increasing demands on his health that, in the end, could not be sustained.

Those looking for either a tale of Black triumph against all odds or a polemic against the evils of American racism will be disappointed by Mooney’s work. What the reader will find is a carefully-crafted narrative portraying the life of an intelligent, thoughtful man who was in the difficult position of having influence without power, and who was attempting to navigate complex realities regarding race, community, and personal needs while living in the public eye of a society that demanded conformity to its terms. How well he succeeded, and whether his story raises more questions than answers, is left to the reader.

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Book Review: Landaluce (Mary Perdue)

11/9/2023

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In 1982, a brilliant 2-year-old was lighting up the racing world with sensational performances and dreams of Triple Crown glory to come---not a colt, but a filly. A member of the first crop of Seattle Slew, she evoked memories of her sire and elicited comparisons to the magnificent filly Ruffian, still considered by many to be the best American filly or mare to ever race. Her appeal reached beyond American shores, to the extent that Europeans called her the "Wonder Filly of the West," and her career helped launch Seattle Slew to stardom as a stallion. Yet she never had the chance to reach her full potential, dying of a massive bacterial infection in November 1982, and in the forty years following her death had been largely forgotten except by serious students of racing history. She is forgotten no more, thanks to Mary Perdue's book Landaluce: The Story of Seattle Slew's First Champion (2022, University Press of Kentucky).

Writing as both a fan and an experienced racing journalist, Mary Perdue brings Landaluce back to life as a phenomenal racehorse, a distinct personality, and the focus of a special kind of love story for her trainer, D. Wayne Lukas. The filly's life story is intimately intertwined with that of Spendthrift Farm, where she was bred; with the hopes and fears surrounding the beginning of Seattle Slew's stud career; and with the lives and hearts of the people of Lukas's racing operation. Perdue's handling of the filly's relationship with her trainer is particularly deft and touching: Lukas has since trained other champions and has earned his way into racing's Hall of Fame, but as Perdue shows, Landaluce was a "once-in-a-lifetime" for him, a horse that deeply touched his heart and brought out the human side of the hard-driving, perfectionistic man called "Coach."

Landaluce's story does not have a happy ending, but Perdue's narration provides an empathetic look at the joys as well as the sorrows of the filly's brief life without ever descending to sentimentalism or making Landaluce something other than what she was: a horse. Her work is a worthy finalist for the 17tn annual Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award and a worthwhile addition to the library of any lover of the Thoroughbred.

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Review: Lexington (Kim Wickens)

8/24/2023

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Lexington is an image and an icon. His portrait, painted by the great 19th-century equine artist Edward Troye, greets visitors to the city of Lexington, Kentucky (albeit in a blue-hued version that probably had Troye spinning in his grave when it was first put out); his skeleton is the centerpiece of the International Museum of the Horse’s permanent Thoroughbred in Kentucky exhibit. When leading Thoroughbred periodical The Blood-Horse needed a design for the front cover of its annual Stallion Register, it was Lexington who was chosen to grace a reference used by decades of breeders in choosing stallions for their mares.

Although much has been written regarding Lexington, most of it has touched briefly on his racing career before turning to his monumental achievements as a sire. It is no exaggeration to say that the blood of Lexington was the foundation of the American Thoroughbred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; sixteen times the nation’s leading sire, he was probably even more influential as a broodmare sire. Nonetheless, before Lexington was a stallion, he was a racehorse, and one of the most remarkable ever to set hoof on a track. This is the reality brought to vivid life by Kim Wickens in her book Lexington: The Extraordinary Life and Turbulent Times of America’s Legendary Racehorse (2023, Ballantine Books).

Lexington’s story is inextricably intertwined with that of his owner, Richard Ten Broeck, the leading racecourse manager and promoter of the mid-19th century, and that of Robert Aitcheson Alexander, who purchased Lexington in the aftermath of the horse’s racing career to be the premier stallion at his Woodburn Farm. These interlocked strands are portrayed with rare skill by Wickens, who successfully interweaves them with both the minutiae of the procedures of horse racing and training of that era and the sweeping scope of the social and political tensions of the antebellum South and Civil War-torn Kentucky. The chapters centering around the guerrilla rampages of 1864-1865 and Robert Alexander’s desperate attempts to preserve Lexington and Woodburn in the face of these threats are particularly gripping, portraying a microcosm of the devastation being wrought on Kentucky’s agrarian society and its ordinary citizens. No attempt is made to sugar-coat the terror of those years or the atrocities that took place, but Wickens skillfully moves her narrative beyond the horrors into the peaceful years of the rebuilding of Woodburn and the concluding decade of Lexington’s life, which saw him become the most successful American stallion of all time.

Lexington’s personal story did not conclude with his death, for his bones—which were exhumed and articulated for display at the Centennial Exposition of 1876 in Philadelphia—had a tale of their own to tell, and Wickens follows that tale to a satisfying conclusion with Lexington’s return to his home state and city after more than a century. Throughout her book, Wickens never loses sight of either Lexington as a horse or Lexington as a symbol of his time, of a sport, of a city, and of an industry that, more than any other, defines Kentucky. For those who love the Thoroughbred or are interested in either the history of racing in the antebellum South or the history and heritage of Kentucky, Lexington is essential reading than belongs on the shelf of both the horse lover and the historian.

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Book Review: Broken (Fred M. Kray)

8/3/2023

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Alydar was at the center of all the discussion and speculation following the financial collapse of Calumet Farm in 1991, and rightly so. The Hall of Fame racehorse was the farm’s linchpin as a sire and its single most important asset. Dead, he was worth US$41.5 million in insurance payouts—provided his death was ruled accidental. Alive, he was the source of the farm’s primary income stream, but it was a stream no longer sufficient to offset the servicing of Calumet’s mounting debts.

For many people both in and out of the horse industry, there were simply too many coincidences to be ignored when Alydar was euthanized on November 15, 1990, after having been found with a broken right hind leg two days earlier. From the threatened cancellation of one of Alydar’s insurance policies due to non-payment of premiums, to the conflicting accounts given of how the injury was discovered and how it could have occurred, to the revelations of how the stallion and his services had been leveraged and over-leveraged as the farm accumulated US$120 million in debt, the circumstantial case that Alydar had been killed deliberately to collect the insurance on his life appeared strong. Yet, in spite of extensive fraud investigations surrounding Calumet and one of its major creditors, First City National Bank of Houston—investigations that led to federal prison terms for Calumet president J. T. Lundy and his chief financial officer, Gary Matthews—many questions regarding Alydar’s death remained unanswered.

Broken: The Suspicious Death of Alydar and the End of Horse Racing’s Golden Age (2023, Live Oak Press) recounts the personal quest of author Fred M. Kray, a specialist in animal law and an experienced trial attorney, to uncover the truth regarding Alydar’s demise. “Fan” is a light word to apply to Kray’s obvious personal attachment to the horse; as he recounts the development of his appreciation for Alydar during the horse’s racing days and the meaning that Alydar has lent to him during his own life journey, one gains a sense of Kray’s emotional connection to a magnificent racehorse, a connection that has fueled his determination to discover what truly happened.

Kray’s quest in some ways raises more questions than it answers, as Kray soberly reports the questions asked, the testimony given, and the evidence presented during the course of the federal investigations and trials concerning Calumet. The tone is impersonal compared to that of the opening section of the book, but this shift is appropriate given the subject matter. Nonetheless, there are ghosts that haunt Kray’s account of the legal proceedings—those of the questions that were never asked, often because the attorneys involved lacked the experience regarding horses and the horse industry to recognize their importance. Others were deflected by early assumptions that began steering the narrative toward a presumption of accidental death.

Following Kray’s recounting of the evidence and testimonies found in court records, he then turns to his interviews with the witnesses whom he hoped might shed light on Alydar’s story and the injury that ultimately killed him. Over twenty-five people ultimately talked with Kray, including Alydar’s trainer, John Veitch; his stud groom, Michael Coulter; nationally known veterinarian Larry Bramlage, who performed the emergency surgery in the failed attempt to save Alydar’s life; and Frank Cihak, who held Calumet’s financial lifeblood in his hands while he was the senior credit officer at First City National Bank of Houston. These talks are presented at a more intimate, emotional level than the court testimony, and one can sense the tension between Fred Kray, the attorney seeking facts, and Fred Kray, the man seeking a resolution to a loss that had haunted him for nearly three decades.

Kray concludes with a “courtroom of the mind,” presenting his own answer to the mystery of Alydar’s death but allowing the reader to render personal judgment as to its validity. Some may find this rather contrived. For me, it was a logical resolution to a story framed by its author’s experiences and life journey, one that is both a true-crime drama and a testimony to one man’s love of a horse. Broken is not an easy read; those looking for a pat “happy ending” or who are uncomfortable with looking at the dark underbellies of the horse world and human nature should look elsewhere for their next book. Nonetheless, for those willing to follow the evidence where it leads, the story told is compelling and worthy of a place on the bookshelf of both students of horse racing history and fans of the true crime genre. It will certainly have an honored place on mine.

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Book Review: The Foxes of Belair (Jennifer S. Kelly)

7/20/2023

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Just as the late Jim Bolus became the unquestioned historian of the Kentucky Derby, Jennifer Kelly is staking her claim to be the historian of American Thoroughbred racing's Triple Crown. Following on the heels of her outstanding Sir Barton and the Making of the Triple Crown, The Foxes of Belair explores the history of William Woodward and the two American Triple Crown winners that he bred at his Belair Stud, Gallant Fox and his son Omaha. Painstakingly researched and exquisitely detailed, the book provides both in-depth portraits of its heroes and a sweeping overview of the long-range influence that Woodward and his champions exercised on Thoroughbred history, all in an easily read style that shows Kelly to be a master of her craft. The Foxes of Belair deserves a place in the libraries of both serious historians and more casual horse lovers, and I will definitely be looking forward to her next project.

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Book Review: False Riches (John Paul Miller)

Book Review: No Snail (David Owen)

Book Review: Isaac Murphy (Katherine Murphy)

Book Review: Landaluce (Mary Perdue)

Review: Lexington (Kim Wickens)

Book Review: Broken (Fred M. Kray)

Book Review: The Foxes of Belair (Jennifer S. Kelly)

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