Seabiscuit - Laura Hillenbrand

Laura Hillenbrand, author of the runaway phenomenonUnbroken, brilliantly re-creates a universal underdog story in this #1 New York Times bestseller.

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.


From the Hardcover edition.