Books with title Seabiscuit -- 1st State

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.

Seabiscuit: An American Legend is the ultimate underdog story. Seabiscuit was an unlikely champion; his legs were crooked; he had a sad little tail; and he was precisely the color of mud. For two years, he floundered at the lowest level of racing, misunderstood and mishandled, as slow as growing grass, before his dormant talent was discovered by three men. Bought for a bargain-basement price by Howard and rehabilitated by Smith and Pollard, Seabiscuit overcame a phenomenal run of bad fortune to become one of the most spectacular, dominant and charismatic performers in sports history. Competing in the cruelest years of the Depression, the rags-to-riches horse emerged as an American cultural icon, drawing an immense and fanatical following, inspiring an avalanche of merchandising, and establishing himself as the single biggest newsmaker of 1938. An American Legend is a non-fiction book written by Laura Hillenbrand published in 2001 about the thoroughbred race horse, Seabiscuit. It won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year and was adapted as a feature film in 2003.

Laura Hillenbrand, an award-winning racing journalist, delivers an in-depth, winning biography of a horse, detailing the lives of Tom Smith, a silent, eccentric trainer, Charles Howard, a wealthy horseowner, and Red Pollard, a half-blind, down-on-his-luck jockey, whose combined talents produced an unlikely champion. The struggles of Seabiscuit and his jockey paralleled those of an entire nation--which was suffering under the Depression and the threat of war--and caught its attention; in 1938 the horse reportedly received more newspaper coverage than Roosevelt, Hitler, or Mussolini. By delivering work that gives an impressive sense of a particular horse, the sport, the racetrack milieu, and the mood of the country during the time, the author inspires admiration and respect for the implausible champion and his team, and also does a great service to sportswriting. A New York Times Notable Book for 2001.