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Sea Biscuit: An American Legend

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Lois Lee Cathy Hunsicker Reading 1100 October 13, 2014 Book Review of Sea Biscuit “An American Legend” Sea Biscuit: An American Legend (USA: Random House Inc., 2001) by Laura Hillenbrand is an inspiring classic true story of three unlikely, individuals and a race horse over-coming the odds during the Great Depression. Competing in the cruelest years of the Depression, this classic story of a rags-to-riches race horse emerged as an American cultural icon. Inspiring and heartwarming, Sea Biscuit managed to establish himself as the single biggest newsmaker of 1938; bigger than Franklin Delanore Roosevelt and even Hitler of that day and age! Laura Hillenbrand, born May 15, 1967; is an American author of books and magazine articles. Hillenbrand …show more content…

Hillenbrand first told the story through an essay, "Four Good Legs between Us," that she sold to American Heritage magazine, and the feedback was positive, so she decided to proceed with a full nonfiction book. Upon the book's release, Hillenbrand's first book was the acclaimed Sea biscuit: An American Legend (2001), a nonfiction account of the career of the greatest racehorse ever, Sea biscuit; for which she won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year in 2001, the highest journalistic honor in Thoroughbred racing. The book itself contains many pictures and accurate portraits of events and people during that day and age. Hillenbrand’s book is written mostly in chronological order with a few flash backs as far as her characters go and each chapter is clearly listed and her information is amazingly true and accurate to the best of her …show more content…

It’s the true story of how three men and a great racehorse captivated and inspired the entire world! Story has it that Sea Biscuit was a most unlikely champion because he was a small mud colored animal with forelegs that didn’t straighten all the way. In other words he had short, knobby knees that were distasteful to the experienced horse trader. The horse was that of a severely abused, beaten, and run- down w retch that no one paid any attention to. Sea Biscuit spent nearly two seasons floundering in the lowest ranks of racing, misunderstood and mishandled. Ironically his jockey, Red Pollard, was a poor young man who had been abandoned as a young boy at a makeshift race track that had been recently cut through a Montana hay field. Sea Biscuit’s trainer, a mysterious, almost mute mustang breaker named Tom Smith, was a refugee from a vanishing frontier, bearing with him generations of lost wisdom about the secrets of horses. Last, but not least, Sea Biscuit’s owner Charles Howard, was a broad, beaming former cavalryman that had begun his career as a bicycle mechanic before parlaying 21 cents into an all-time automotive empire. Then, one sunny, August day in Detroit, Pollard, Smith, and Howard formed an unlikely alliance. Each man independently recognizing the unseen, dormant talent in the horse, as well as in one another, began a sort of rehabilitation of Sea Biscuit that would lift him, and them, from obscurity and into the

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