Seabiscuit: An American Legend – Laura Hillenbrand, 2001 ★★★★

Somebody Bet on the Bay

First-time author Laura Hillenbrand put on a master class in popular-history writing with this improbable tale of an ungainly little red racehorse that could.

Luminously written, with deep appreciation for the culture of the racetrack and the colorful personalities that lived and died around it, Seabiscuit is the sort of history book that not only edifies and entertains but asks us to ponder how amazing a thing life can be.

The Derby – Bill Levy, 1967 ★★½

The Most Exciting 200 Minutes of Sports

Since 1875, the Kentucky Derby has been drawing the greatest race horses ever known. Okay, not Man O’ War or Seabiscuit, or famous 20^th century racehorses outside North America. But hundreds of top American thoroughbreds have beaten their hooves along the dirt track of Churchill Downs for what is often called “the most exciting two minutes of sports.” After nearly 100 years of this, Bill Levy wrote a coffee-table book commemorating the event.

High Stakes – Dick Francis, 1975 ★★½

Hard-Charging Mystery Hangs on at the Turn

If you know Dick Francis already and want more of his mystery fiction, here’s another gripping if formulaic excursion into the underside of life, connected in this case rather firmly to Francis’s home turf, the world of horse-racing.

If you are a Francis novice, High Stakes isn’t exactly the type to make you a fan.

A feeling of being run through the motions hangs over this crime novel, not unlike finding yourself inside one of the wheel-driven devices with which, we come to discover, the main character has made himself a mint.

Knockdown – Dick Francis, 1974 ★★

Putting the Blood in Bloodstock

Dick Francis wrote very well. I feel confident in stating this, in part because I have read some fine Dick Francis novels and in part because he kept me reading this, a novel by no means fine. It is the mark of a superlative novelist to hold a reader’s attention even when firing blanks.

Knockdown begins with exactly that, a knockdown attack on our protagonist while he arranges a horse sale. As this is the livelihood of Jonah Dereham, he is both concerned and confused.

Why would a pair of thugs beat him up over the title to a non-sensational horse? And why would they attack him again when he acquires its replacement? Is it business? Is it personal? In time, Dereham discovers it is a bit of both.