JC / Railbird

Books Archive

Spring Reading

This spring* brings a bounty of books with ties to horse racing, and only one is about the 12th Triple Crown winner — Joe Drape’s American Pharoah: The Untold Story of the Triple Crown Winner’s Legendary Rise, which comes out on April 26. If this biography by a New York Times writer of the first horse to sweep the American classics in 37 years isn’t definitive, it’s still the book anyone else who tries to write about American Pharoah will have to cite.

Two more new releases are set for April 26 — Eliza McGraw’s Here Comes Exterminator! tells the story of the longshot winner of the 1918 Kentucky Derby. The author’s history with the great horse goes deep:

My affection and reverence for Exterminator started when I read Mildred Mastin Pace’s 1955 “Old Bones, the Wonder Horse” as a child. I became re-interested with his story when I was writing an article about cavalry horses in World War I, and saw contemporary headlines. Now, I’ve become obsessed, and spend hours at the Library of Congress and the National Sporting Library in Middleburg, Va., leafing through old copies of the Thoroughbred Records from the 1920s. Last year, my preoccupation took me to Pennsylvania, to visit Garrett and Muriel McDaniel. Garrett is Henry McDaniel’s great-nephew. “These were Uncle Henry’s,” he told me, handing over a worn pair of binoculars. They felt heavy and cool in my hand, and I imagined the thrill McDaniel felt as he watched Exterminator flash around the track.

McGraw writes more about Exterminator and her research on Raceday 360.

For the more literary-minded, there’s The Sport of Kings, the second novel by Hemingway/PEN award finalist C.E. Morgan. Set on a breeding farm owned by a powerful Kentucky family, centered on a horse named Hellsmouth, it’s described by the publisher as “an unflinching portrait of lives cast in shadow by the enduring legacy of slavery.” (Put it on the shelf next to Lord of Misrule.) You can read an excerpt on the publisher’s website.

The Legend of Zippy Chippy: Life Lessons from Horse Racing’s Most Lovable Loser, by humorist William Thomas, is in bookstores (and ready to ship from Amazon) today. There’s been some good press around this book and the Zippy Chippy story, such as this delightful New York Post feature. Zippy’s enjoying a happy retirement at Old Friends’ Cabin Creek farm.

If you’re interested in the intersection of horse racing and tech, or the collision of social media and the Zenyatta fandom, Holly Kruse’s Off-Track and Online: The Networked Spaces of Horse Racing has you covered. Kruse approaches an “overlooked” industry and its participants as a researcher and racing fan, a compelling mix for an academic title that opens with the invention of the totalizator and tries to impress on readers the importance of “understanding age, gender, class, race, and geography in broader social contexts.”

It might seem an odd pairing, but My Adventures with Your Money can easily be read alongside Kruse’s book as a tale of finding innovative — and not always legal — ways to use new technologies. Published last fall (making it the * in this round-up), T.D. Thornton’s history of con man George Graham Rice fits our cultural moment (and maybe this election season). A swindler, a grifter, a hustler who couldn’t stop hustling, Rice got his start selling tout sheets and manipulating the tote, then bounced in and out of prison for luring suckers into bad investments in the go-go days of 1920s Wall Street (he was also a “pioneer of sex appeal” in marketing). Rice preyed on the greedy and naive and relished it — if you like to root for charismatic anti-heroes (Walter White, Donald Trump), or if you’re fascinated by how such people entice dupes into their schemes, you’ll probably get a kick out of his story.

Posted in Books on April 5, 2016

What’s So Great …

About the Internet is that you can do such things as set up Google alerts for simple keywords — like “racehorses” — and your email will deliver notice of an overlooked Trollope novel, recommended by Jane Smiley, no less.

Posted in Books on April 18, 2008

Congratulations

To T.D. Thornton, winner of the Castleton Lyons- Thoroughbred Times Book Award for “Not By a Long Shot,” (now available in paperback). Complete coverage of the Monograph Mile from Quinella Queen, who rightfully urges all to pick up this winner.

Posted in Books, Suffolk Downs on April 8, 2008

Recommended Reading

The small mess of a mail pile that awaited me on my return home this week contained a delightful surprise: An envelope from PublicAffairs, containing a copy of T.D. Thornton’s marvelous “Not by a Longshot,” which comes out in paperback this April. The book is outfitted with a new cover that captures the dark uncertainties and workaday thrills of racing at a working-class track that Thornton writes about so well. If you haven’t yet read this story of a season at Suffolk Downs, be sure to pick up a copy this spring. By which I mean, buy it — although Thornton told John he supports the subversives who liberated “Not by a Longshot” from Boston bookstores, I’m guessing he wouldn’t mind an occasional royalty check.

Posted in Books, Suffolk Downs on March 14, 2008

Pack at the Track

Harvey Pack returns to Saratoga for another season of Siro’s seminars on Wednesday, joined by the usual suspects to handicap opening day. This summer, Pack has more than horse tips for fans: He has a memoir, the charmingly entertaining “May the Horse Be with You,” written with Peter Thomas Fornatale, in which the raconteur-horseplayer regales readers with stories of grandstand habitues, wild schemes, and bad beats, drawn from more than half a century of hanging around racetracks. “May the Horse Be with You” is classic Pack; just the thing for the Spa.

Posted in Books on July 23, 2007

Not by a Longshot

My old home track of Suffolk Downs opens on Saturday with a new owner, 102 days of racing scheduled, and dime superfectas on the wagering menu (DRF). New England’s lone thoroughbred racing venue is also the subject of a new book this spring, “Not by a Longshot,” by T.D. Thornton, who writes about the highs, lows, and ho-hum days of the track’s 2000 season so well that I found myself wishing I was back in East Boston. “Not by a Longshot” is a wonderfully evocative book, making vivid the daily routine on the frontside and backside of a hard-luck track like Suffolk, the characters who populate it, and the horses who run for them. Plus, for those who know Suffolk, there are plenty of gossipy bits …
Addendum: It was a “spiffy” opening day for Suffolk Downs, with 16,437 people in attendance (Boston Globe).
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Also recently published: “Ruffian: A Racetrack Romance,” by William Nack. A superb retelling of the great filly’s brilliant career and catastrophic end, as remembered by one of her biggest fans.

Posted in Books on May 4, 2007

The Solace of Books

I should have been writing, or at least handicapping this Saturday’s Derby preps, but the unusual spring-like weather we had in the Boston area this afternoon lured me outside for a long walk that ended at one of my favorite used bookstores — Robin Bledsoe, Bookseller — where I contemplated buying a copy of the 1991 edition of the gorgeously illustrated “Secretariat” by Raymond Woolfe and admired a first edition of Joe Palmer’s “Names in Pedigrees.” Robin specializes in equine books and knows racing, and hanging out in her cozy Cambridge shop was a nice antidote to the mid-winter no-horses funk that’s been hanging over me lately. After nearly an hour of happy browsing and conversation, I left with a copy of Avalyn Hunter’s now out-of-print “American Classic Pedigrees” and a short list of books to look forward to in coming months, including a new biography of Man O’War by Dorothy Ours, a history of the great match race between Eclipse and Henry in 1823 by John Eisenberg, and a coast-to-coast guide to American racetracks (not written by McChump). There may be no live racing in Boston until May, but at least I won’t lack for reading material about my beloved sport until then.

Posted in Books on January 13, 2006

New Books

Recently read …

“Horseplayers: Life at the Track” is a delightful memoir of the year Chicago writer and aspiring professional handicapper Ted McClelland spent playing the horses, and a funny, honest account of what it means to devote one’s life to beating the races. McClelland details his transformation from casual fan to obsessed racing geek with humor, as when he tells the story of calling his father to let him know he’d be visiting Dubai World Cup weekend — “That’s also Easter weekend,” says his father. “Is it? I didn’t see anything about that in the Racing Form,” replies McClelland — and captures the handicapper’s daily grind with equal parts wit and exasperation. Very little comes easily to McClelland or most of the other players he meets during the year — none have the preternatural discipline of one of the author’s mentors, the handicapper Scott McMannis — but among the losses, there’s an occasional big score, and eventually, an epiphany:

That’s one of the most useful statements anyone has ever made about the game, even if it is a little bleak.

Racegoers who want to know more about predicting equine behavior though and profiting off of it would do well to pick up a copy of “Insider’s Guide to Horseracing,” by New York trainer T.A. Landers. This highly readable racing primer is reminiscent of “Ainslie’s Complete Guide to Thoroughbred Racing” with its clear, concise, and intelligent approach to giving curious fans information on everything from equipment, shoes, and bandages, to training principles, track conditions, and reading past performances. Landers fills in the gaps left by many handicapping books, making this one an essential for the reference shelf.

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And coming out soon …
Suffolk Downs is the focus of a new book featuring more than 200 images of the track compiled by Suffolk director of public relations Christian Teja. “Suffolk Downs” is part of the Arcadia “Images of Sports” series and will be published on June 29. Teja talks to Boston Globe racing writer Ron Indrisano about the photos he chose and putting the book together.

Posted in Books on June 24, 2005

Six Secrets of Successful Bettors

The “Six Secrets of Successful Bettors” are hardly secrets at all, but a more apt title — like “Six Characteristics of Successful Bettors” — for the new book by Frank Scatoni and Pete Fornatale wouldn’t sound as snappy. Interviewing more than two dozen top players, the pair distilled handicapping success into these principles: treat betting as a business, make good use of available resources, only bet when you have an edge, manage your money to maximize your advantage, know how to handicap yourself, and control your emotions. Anyone who’s approached handicapping seriously, or thought about trying to do it professionally, has probably hit upon most of these ideas intuitively. Still, it’s kind of nice to have these commensense recommendations condensed into one book, with each principle illustrated through quotes from the likes of Steven Crist and Andy Serling.

Posted in Books on April 14, 2005

Spring Reading

The racing shelf at your local bookstore is about to get more crowded as several new books on the sport are published this spring. Jockey Jerry Bailey’s autobiography, “Against the Odds,” will be out in April and promises to detail “the making of both a man and a champion.” Readers who haven’t had enough of the Smarty Jones story will want to pick up “Smarty Jones: The Horse that Captured America’s Heart,” by Jay Acton. Marvin Drager writes about horses that captured more than the country’s heart in “The Most Glorious Crown: The Story of America’s Triple Crown Thoroughbreds from Sir Barton to Affirmed.” For those looking for an in-depth tour of racing, T.A. Landers offers a guide to the sport’s in and outs in “Insider’s Guide to Horseracing,” while Frank Scatoni gives readers “Six Secrets of Successful Bettors,” and Ted McClelland profiles the handicappers and track habitues he met over the course of a year in “Horseplayers: Life at the Track.”

Posted in Books on February 23, 2005