The World’s Greatest Horse Stories

This diverting volume from editor McCarthy (Great American Wartime Survival Stories) serves as an “homage to horses and what they mean to us.” It features essays, personal reminiscences, biographies of the champion racehorses Secretariat and Citation, and insights into horse behavior from Buck Brannaman, the real-life inspiration for the bestselling novel The Horse Whisperer. There are also excerpts from classics, including Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, which is told from the point of view of the horse—first published in 1877, it went on to become one of the most popular books of all time, with more than 50 million copies sold—and Mark Twain’s A Horse’s Tale (1907), which is partially narrated by Buffalo Bill’s horse, Soldier Boy. Among the short stories, there is sportswriter Hugh S. Fullerton’s “Hardshell Gaines” (1922), which tells the tale of a racehorse owner who loves horses more than he desires riches. Also featured are former political speechwriter Melinda Roth’s reminiscences, drawn from her memoir Mestengo, about renting an isolated farm in northern Illinois and finding herself caretaker to a wild horse pastured there by the Bureau of Land Management, and an excerpt from Mark Shrager’s biography of Diane Crump, the first woman to ride in the Kentucky Derby. There is something to catch the fancy of every horse fancier in this entertaining collection. (June)