Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #111865 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-10
• Released on: 2008-06-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780312382254
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
In this rambling tale, author Scanlan (The Man Who Listens to Horses) declares his intention to explore the relationship between Triple Crown winner Secretariat and his long-time groom, Eddie Sweat. For Scanlan, the African-American Sweat is a symbol of the exploited, underappreciated workers who make the sport of kings run but receive a pittance of the winnings and even less recognition. Scanlan's mission is a noble one, but although he's right there in the subtitle, the groom is strangely absent from the text, and the quest becomes a McGuffin that allows the writer to travel to racetracks around the country. The journey is not without its pleasures, however. Scanlan has written over a dozen books on horses, and this volume bulges with insight into and sensitivity toward the world of Thoroughbred horse racing. He offers hundreds of racing anecdotes and endless minutiae about Secretariat's career. More interestingly, he introduces readers to the marginal figures—grooms, hot-walkers, exercise riders, smalltime trainers, breeders and owners—whose love for horses and hope for a lucky break outweigh their desire to make a decent living. Sadly, he also explains that all too many broken-down Thoroughbreds end their careers in the abattoir. In this backstretch meditation, Scanlan's scope is encyclopedic, but his narrative never finally coheres. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
One might question whether another account of Secretariat's life is really necessary. Bill Nack's marvelous Big Red of Meadow Stable (1975) still stands as the definitive biography of the 1973 Triple Crown winner's racing career, and Raymond Woolfe's Secretariat (2001) took us through the great horse's death in 1989. Scanlan takes a different approach, however, focusing largely on the horse's bond with his unsung groom, Eddie Sweat, and the roll that Sweat played in Secretariat's unprecedented success and popularity. Scanlan makes a convincing case that Sweat was instrumental in keeping his horse healthy and happy, a necessary precondition for the success of any equine athlete. Extrapolating from the relationship between Secretariat and Sweat, Scanlan argues, again convincingly, that grooms are the largely unappreciated and universally underpaid bedrock upon which the entire edifice of Thoroughbred racing is built. His point is driven home by the poignant circumstances of Eddie Sweat's death in 1998. While Secretariat's owner and trainer gained both fame and wealth through their association with the horse, the groom died penniless and-until now-unknown to all but a few racing insiders. Dennis Dodge
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From the Inside Flap

Customer Reviews

Truely moved by this book
I just finished "The Horse God Built". I sat down on my couch with it this morning and started it. I couldn't put it down except for a few convenience breaks. I almost forgot to eat!

There have been some wonderful books written about Secretariat, and I've read all of them I could find. Mr.Scanlan goes a step further by including the most important person in Secretariat's life...Eddie (Shorty) Sweat. He did this without overlooking a moment of Secretariat's life and his wonderous accomplishments. Eddie's story only added to the beauty of Big Red's story by Mr.Scanlan and it wouldn't have been complete without it. Eddie would have been so proud.

I'm still shaken from reading this book. I sat on my couch and read until I finished all 335 pages, including the index. Those pages had me totally hypnotized. I smiled, I laughed, and I cried.

Thank you, Lawrence Scanlan for taking me back to Secretariat once again. You took me on a wonderful, exciting journey and I enjoyed the ride so much. I will cherish this book, as I will all my books, photos, prints, and clippings of this magnificient horse. You taught me things I didn't even know about BigRed. I learned things about other great Thoroughbreds along the way. Thank you, thank you!!

Suzanne Whitaker
a Texan and an ardent admirer of the horse God built.

Great Magazine Article
Mr. Scanlan, the winner of numerous magazine writing awards, has written another great magazine article. Unfortunately, Mr. Scanlan has written a book instead that does not support his story line past twenty pages. The thrust of the story is that Eddie Sweat, Secretariat's groom, was a super guy who did a fine job, but got left out of the shuffle of recognition of all those who made Secretariat great. Perhaps all of that is true. It is great that Mr. Sweat is getting some focus now. The book just does not have all that much to say past making the acknowledgement of Mr. Sweat's place in the historic picture.

Some of the principles involved in the story Mr. Scanlan writes (my great privilage to know them) have told me that there are many errors of fact. For what I know first hand, Mr. Scanlan never says anything absolutely wrong, and certainly not with malice, but he is careless and he does fall back on others to suggest interpertations that do not reflect reality.

For example, Scanlan, again not directly, bemoans the preservation of Secretariat's birthplace, Meadow Farm, as the new home of the State Fair of Virginia. This shallow conclusion is made from the car window conversation he had with site scavengers. So much is incorrect with this brief passage that it would take too long to detail, but the main point Scanlan misses is that the Meadow would have been turned into 10 acre "farmettes" had the Fair and Caroline County not worked together to keep the Meadow intact. A "farmette" is hardly the fitting end for Secretariat's birthplace.

Now the Meadow will house an equestrian museum that will honor Secretariat while the site will once again become a center of Virginia equestrian events. One phone call would have put this story right. Somehow, the scavengers were unable to brief Scanlan on these plans.

Two Books that Secretariat fans should read are Raymond Wolfe's "Secretariat" (snappy writing along with many amazing images), and Bill Nack's authoritative, "Secretariat: Making of a Champion." Both are fine works.

could have been so much better
Like other reviewers, I assumed this was a book about Secretariat. Why? Well, the title is "The Horse That God Built." Not "All the often unacknowledged souls who cared for the horse that God built," which would've been more accurate, if too cumbersome. I love horses, have owned, ridden and worked around them since I was young, but this book was hard going. At first, the author states that he's going to also write about Eddie Sweat, Secretariat's beloved groom. Well, that was fine, too. It sounded like an unique angle, and certainly Sweat deserves acknowledgement. I also thought it would be intriguing to read a book that seemed to promise that it would address the class differences in the racehorse world head on. However, I never did figure out what the author's thesis was.

The stories about Secretariat and his crew were certainly interesting. Hero worship of "Big Red" reached such proportions in the seventies, that he appeared on the cover of Time and fans begged for a strand of his mane or even some manure. Still, after awhile, I wanted more than just reminescing that seemed random. I wished the book's structure had shaped itself more in a chronological order of either Secretariat's or Eddie's career. Overall, it read like a magazine story and should have been given more editing in order for it to become a cohesive book.