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Bill Hartack won the Kentucky Derby five times, and seemed to hate every moment. "If only Bill could have gotten along with people the way he got along with horses," a trainer said. His impoverished upbringing didn't help: his mother was killed in an automobile accident; the family home burned down; his father was murdered by a girlfriend; and he was estranged from his sisters for most of his life. Larry King, his friend, said it was just as well Hartack never married, because it wouldn't have lasted. Hartack was one of racing's most accomplished jockeys. But he was an inveterate grouch and gave the press a hard time. At 26, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame. Whenever the media tried to bury him, he would win another Derby. At the end of his life, he was found alone in a cabin in the Texas hinterlands. Drawn from dozens of interviews and conversations with family members, friends and enemies, this book provides a full account of Hartack's turbulent life.
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Each chapter tells the story of each champion's racing career, decade by decade, followed by past performances of these Thoroughbred legends. There is a chapter for each decade, recounting a few horses' careers and several memorable races, accompanied by pictures of horses in action and at rest, to celebrate and honor the greatest achievements of the Thoroughbred bloodline.
ON NOVEMBER 30 1978, SEATTLE SLEW RETIRED FROM THOROUGHBRED HORSE RACING. SHORTLY THEREAFTER, HE ENTERED STALLION DUTY. IMMEDIATELY, HE BEGAN PRODUCING CHAMPION SONS AND DAUGHTERS AT A FEVER PITCH PACE. ON APRIL 21 1981, ONE OF HIS GREATEST AND MOST BELOVED SONS WAS BORN. HIS NAME WAS SWALE. HE WAS A CHIP OFF THE OLE' BLOCK. THIS BOOK IS THE STORY OF HIS LIFE. DURING HIS SHORT LIFE, SWALE DEFINED THE TRUE MEANING OF COURAGE. WHENEVER HE WAS CHALLENGED, HE ROSE TO MEET THAT CHALLENGE. HE NEVER BACKED AWAY FROM A FIGHT. HE DISPLAYED GRIT AND VALOR OUT ON THAT RACETRACK, LIKE NO THOROUGHBRED BEFORE HIM, OR SINCE. WHEN YOU ARE FINISHED READING THIS BOOK, YOU WILL LOVE SWALE, AND YOU WILL NEVER FORGET HIM.
In 1877 the members of the United States Senate postponed all business for the day so that they might attend a horse race—the iconic, polarizing post-Civil War event at the center of this story. The nation, still recovering from the depredations of the Civil War and the Reconstruction that followed, recognized it as a North vs. South encounter, pitting New York’s powerful thoroughbred Tom Ochiltree and New Jersey’s Parole—owned by the ostentatious Northern tycoons Pierre and George Lorrilard—against the already legendary “Kentucky crack,” Ten Broeck—owned by the teetotaling, plain-living Frank Harper and ridden by black jockey and former slave William Walker—representing a former slave state and its Southern values. The race and the colorful cast of characters involved reflected the still seething America during one of the nation’s most difficult and divisive periods. Shrager presents a fascinating and heart-pounding piece of history exposing the racial and economic tensions following the Civil War that culminated in one final race to the end.
ÔGlobalization, it seems, has propelled the worldÕs uber-wealthy to new heights of power and money, with tremendous repercussions for the other 99.9 percent of us. At a time when neoliberalism has propelled the world into a new Gilded Age, with rising inequality everywhere, an aggressive class war being waged by the wealthy, and billionaires inserting themselves bluntly into the political arena, understanding the behavior and spatiality of the super-rich has acquired a pressing urgency. This volume offers a richly textured suite of essays concerning how the super-rich have restructured local places, transforming landscapes as varied as London and Kentucky, Ireland and St. Barts, as well as...
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