{"product_id":"seabiscuit-isbn-9780449005613","title":"Seabiscuit","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e#1 \u003ci\u003eNEW YORK TIMES \u003c\/i\u003eBESTSELLER • From the author of the runaway phenomenon \u003ci\u003eUnbroken \u003c\/i\u003ecomes a universal underdog story about the horse who came out of nowhere to become a legend.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e“Fascinating . . . Vivid . . . A first-rate piece of storytelling, leaving us not only with a vivid portrait of a horse but a fascinating slice of American history as well.”—\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eA \u003ci\u003eKIRKUS REVIEWS \u003c\/i\u003eBEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE CENTURY\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSeabiscuit 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:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCharles 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.“Fascinating . . . Vivid . . . A first-rate piece of storytelling, leaving us not   only with a vivid portrait of a horse but a fascinating slice of American history   as well.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Engrossing . . . Fast-moving . . . More than just   a horse’s tale, because the humans who owned, trained, and rode Seabiscuit are equally   fascinating. . . . [Hillenbrand] shows an extraordinary talent for describing a horse   race so vividly that the reader feels like the rider.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eSports Illustrated\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “REMARKABLE   . . . MEMORABLE . . . JUST AS COMPELLING TODAY AS IT WAS IN 1938.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Washington   Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eLaura Hillenbrand has been writing about Thoroughbred racing since 1988 and has been a contributing writer\/editor for \u003ci\u003eEquus\u003c\/i\u003e magazine since 1989.  Her work has also appeared in \u003ci\u003eAmerican Heritage, ABC Sports Online, The Blood-Horse, Thoroughbred Times, The Backstretch, Turf \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eSport Digest\u003c\/i\u003e and  many other publications.  Her 1998 \u003ci\u003eAmerican Heritage\u003c\/i\u003e article on Seabiscuit won the Eclipse Award for Magazine Writing,  the highest award for Thoroughbred racing. She is currently serving as  a consultant on a Universal Studios movie based on this book.  Born in Fairfax, Virginia, Laura lives in Washington, D.C.THE DAY OF THE HORSE IS PAST\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCharles Howard had the feel of a gigantic onrushing machine: You had to either climb on or leap out of the way. He would sweep into a room, working a cigarette in his fingers, and people would trail him like pilot fish. They couldn’t help themselves. Fifty-eight years old in 1935, Howard was a tall, glowing man in a big suit and a very big Buick. But it wasn’t his physical bearing that did it. He lived on a California ranch so huge that a man could take a wrong turn on it and be lost forever, but it wasn’t his circumstances either. Nor was it that he spoke loud or long; the surprise of the man was his understatement, the quiet and kindly intimacy of his acquaintance. What drew people to him was something intangible, an air about him. There was a certain inevitability to Charles Howard, an urgency radiating from him that made people believe that the world was always going to bend to his wishes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOn an afternoon in 1903, long before the big cars and the ranch and all\u003cbr\u003ethe money, Howard began his adulthood with only that air of destiny and\u003cbr\u003e21 cents in his pocket. He sat in the swaying belly of a transcontinental\u003cbr\u003etrain, snaking west from New York. He was twenty-six, handsome, gentle-manly, with a bounding imagination. Back then he had a lot more hair than\u003cbr\u003eanyone who knew him later would have guessed. Years in the saddles of\u003cbr\u003emilitary-school horses had taught him to carry his six-foot-one-inch frame\u003cbr\u003estraight up.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe was eastern born and bred, but he had a westerner’s restlessness.\u003cbr\u003eHe had tried to satisfy it by enlisting in the cavalry for the Spanish-American War, and though he became a skilled horseman, thanks to bad\u003cbr\u003etiming and dysentery he never got out of Camp Wheeler in Alabama. After\u003cbr\u003ehis discharge, he got a job in New York as a bicycle mechanic, took up\u003cbr\u003ecompetitive bicycle racing, got married, and had two sons. It seems to have been a good life, but the East stifled Howard. His mind never seemed to\u003cbr\u003esettle down. His ambitions had fixed upon the vast new America on the\u003cbr\u003eother side of the Rockies. That day in 1903 he couldn’t resist the impulse\u003cbr\u003eanymore. He left everything he’d ever known behind, promised his wife\u003cbr\u003eFannie May he’d send for her soon, and got on the train.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe got off in San Francisco. His two dimes and a penny couldn’t carry\u003cbr\u003ehim far, but somehow he begged and borrowed enough money to open a\u003cbr\u003elittle bicycle-repair shop on Van Ness Avenue downtown. He tinkered\u003cbr\u003ewith the bikes and waited for something interesting to come his way.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt came in the form of a string of distressed-looking men who began appearing at his door. Eccentric souls with too much money in their pockets\u003cbr\u003eand far too much time on their hands, they had blown thick wads of cash\u003cbr\u003eon preposterous machines called automobiles. Some of them were feeling\u003cbr\u003eterribly sorry about it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe horseless carriage was just arriving in San Francisco, and its debut\u003cbr\u003ewas turning into one of those colorfully unmitigated disasters that bring\u003cbr\u003emisery to everyone but historians. Consumers were staying away from the\u003cbr\u003e“devilish contraptions” in droves. The men who had invested in them\u003cbr\u003ewere the subjects of cautionary tales, derision, and a fair measure of public loathing. In San Francisco in 1903, the horse and buggy was not going the\u003cbr\u003eway of the horse and buggy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor good reason. The automobile, so sleekly efficient on paper, was in\u003cbr\u003epractice a civic menace, belching out exhaust, kicking up storms of dust,\u003cbr\u003ebecoming hopelessly mired in the most innocuous-looking puddles, tying\u003cbr\u003eup horse traffic, and raising an earsplitting cacophony that sent buggy\u003cbr\u003ehorses fleeing. Incensed local lawmakers responded with monuments to\u003cbr\u003elegislative creativity. The laws of at least one town required automobile\u003cbr\u003edrivers to stop, get out, and fire off Roman candles every time horse-drawn vehicles came into view. Massachusetts tried and, fortunately, failed to\u003cbr\u003emandate that cars be equipped with bells that would ring with each revo-\u003cbr\u003elution of the wheels. In some towns police were authorized to disable passing cars with ropes, chains, wires, and even bullets, so long as they took\u003cbr\u003ereasonable care to avoid gunning down the drivers. San Francisco didn’t\u003cbr\u003eescape the legislative wave. Bitter local officials pushed through an ordinance banning automobiles from the Stanford campus and all tourist\u003cbr\u003eareas, effectively exiling them from the city.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNor were these the only obstacles. The asking price for the cheapest\u003cbr\u003eautomobile amounted to twice the $500 annual salary of the average citizen— some cost three times that much—and all that bought you was four\u003cbr\u003ewheels, a body, and an engine. “Accessories” like bumpers, carburetors,\u003cbr\u003eand headlights had to be purchased separately. Just starting the thing,\u003cbr\u003ethrough hand cranking, could land a man in traction. With no gas stations,\u003cbr\u003eowners had to lug five-gallon fuel cans to local drugstores, filling them for\u003cbr\u003e60 cents a gallon and hoping the pharmacist wouldn’t substitute benzene\u003cbr\u003efor gasoline. Doctors warned women away from automobiles, fearing slow\u003cbr\u003esuffocation in noxious fumes. A few adventurous members of the gentler\u003cbr\u003esex took to wearing ridiculous “windshield hats,” watermelon-sized fabric\u003cbr\u003eballoons, equipped with little glass windows, that fit over the entire head,\u003cbr\u003eleaving ample room for corpulent Victorian coiffures. Navigation was another nightmare. The first of San Francisco’s road signs were only just\u003cbr\u003ebeing erected, hammered up by an enterprising insurance underwriter\u003cbr\u003ewho hoped to win clients by posting directions into the countryside,\u003cbr\u003ewhose drivers retreated for automobile “picnic parties” held out of the\u003cbr\u003eview of angry townsfolk.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFinally, driving itself was something of a touch-and-go pursuit. The\u003cbr\u003efirst automobiles imported to San Francisco had so little power that they\u003cbr\u003erarely made it up the hills. The grade of Nineteenth Avenue was so daunting for the engines of the day that watching automobiles straining for the\u003cbr\u003etop became a local pastime. The automobiles’ delicate constitutions and\u003cbr\u003egeneral faintheartedness soon became a source of scorn. One cartoon from the era depicted a wealthy couple standing on a roadside next to its dearly\u003cbr\u003edeparted vehicle. The caption read, “The Idle Rich.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhere San Franciscans saw an urban nuisance, Charles Howard saw\u003cbr\u003eopportunity. Automobile-repair shops hadn’t been created yet—and\u003cbr\u003ewould have made little sense anyway as few were fool enough to buy a car.\u003cbr\u003eOwners had no place to go when their cars expired. A bicycle repairman\u003cbr\u003ewas the closest thing to an auto mechanic available, and Howard’s shop\u003cbr\u003ewas conveniently close to the neighborhoods of wealthy car owners.\u003cbr\u003eHoward hadn’t been in town long before the owners began showing up on\u003cbr\u003ehis doorstep.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHoward had a weakness for lost causes. He accepted the challenge,\u003cbr\u003epoked around in the cars, and figured out how to fix them. Soon he was\u003cbr\u003eshowing up at the primitive automobile races held around the city. Before\u003cbr\u003elong, he was driving in them. The first American race, run around\u003cbr\u003eEvanston, Illinois, had been held only eight years before, with the winning\u003cbr\u003ecar ripping along at the dizzying average speed of seven and a half miles\u003cbr\u003eper hour. But by 1903, automotive horsepower had greatly improved—\u003cbr\u003eone car averaged 65.3 mph in a cross-European race that season—making\u003cbr\u003ethe races a good spectacle. It also made for astronomical casualty rates.\u003cbr\u003eThe European race, for one, turned into such a godawful bloodletting that\u003cbr\u003eit was ultimately halted due to “too many fatalities.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHoward was beginning to see these contraptions as the instrument of\u003cbr\u003ehis ambition. Taking an audacious step, he booked a train east, got off in\u003cbr\u003eDetroit, and somehow talked his way into a meeting with Will Durant,\u003cbr\u003echief of Buick Automobiles and future founder of General Motors.\u003cbr\u003eHoward told Durant that he wanted to be a part of the industry, troubled\u003cbr\u003ethough it was. Durant liked what he saw and hired him to set up dealerships\u003cbr\u003eand recruit dealers. Howard returned to San Francisco, opened the\u003cbr\u003ePioneer Motor Company on Buick’s behalf, and hired a local man to manage\u003cbr\u003eit. But on a checkup visit, he was dismayed to find that the manager\u003cbr\u003ewas focusing his sales effort not on Buicks but on ponderous Thomas Flyers. Howard went back to Detroit and told Durant that he could do better.\u003cbr\u003eDurant was sold. Howard walked away with the Buick franchise for all of\u003cbr\u003eSan Francisco. It was 1905, and he was just twenty-eight years old.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHoward returned to San Francisco by train with three Buicks in tow.\u003cbr\u003eBy some accounts, he first housed his automobiles in the parlor of his old\u003cbr\u003ebicycle-repair shop on Van Ness Avenue before moving to a modest building\u003cbr\u003eon Golden Gate Avenue, half a block from Van Ness. He brought Fannie\u003cbr\u003eMay out to join him. With two young boys to feed, and two more soon\u003cbr\u003eto follow, Fannie May must have been alarmed by her husband’s career\u003cbr\u003echoice. Two years had done little to pacify the San Franciscan hostility for\u003cbr\u003ethe automobile. Howard failed to sell a single car.Ballantine Reader's Circle","brand":"Ballantine Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301158670565,"sku":"NP9780449005613","price":22.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780449005613.jpg?v=1767736234","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/seabiscuit-isbn-9780449005613","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}