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Crazy Good: The True Story of Dan Patch, the Most Famous Horse in America
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Home > Nature Books > Horses > Item 13
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Crazy Good: The True Story of Dan Patch, the Most Famous Horse in America
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by Charles Leerhsen
Sales Rank: 20523
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List Price: $26.00
$17.16
At Amazon
on 10-12-2008
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Hardcover: 368 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster May 20, 2008
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0743291778
ISBN-13: 978-0743291774
Product Dimensions:
9.3 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
From Publishers Weekly
In this spirited narrative, Leerhsen, an editor at Sports Illustrated, tells the now-forgotten saga of Dan Patch, a race horse that at one time drew an estimated 60,000 people to a single event in 1903. Admitting from the outset that the events of this book may seem as if they transpired on another planet, Leerhsen delivers a mesmerizing look into a strange corner of American sports and folk history when Dan Patch became a household word, earning roughly $1 million a year at a time when, Leerhsen notes, the-highest paid baseball player, Ty Cobb, was making $12,000. The arc of Dan Patch's career involves a range of often unscrupulous entrepreneurs: his first owner, Dan Messner Jr., who overpays by mistake for an injured pace horse and whose drunken decision to breed the pace horse with a wild stallion results in Dan Patch's birth; the horse's second trainer, Myron McHenry, who despite his conflicts with Messner grooms the horse for success; and M.W. Savage, the horse's final owner, who makes millions from Patch-related merchandise while overworking an obviously tired animal. But the heart of the book is Dan Patch himself, a horse with an almost human capacity for calm and determination that deserves to be rediscovered by a modern audience. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Product Review
"It's a terrific look at a legendary if now forgotten equine superstar named Dan Patch. Leerhsen does for early 20th-century American harness racing what Laura Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit did for Depression-era Thoroughbred racing." -- USA Today
"One of the many satisfactions of Crazy Good is that it goes farther than Seabiscuit -- Laura Hillenbrand's popular resurrection of another unlikely superstar -- in explaining how a horse could be so feted, then forgottenWith wit and a winking charm, Leerhsen, an executive editor at Sports Illustrated, makes sure this handsome brown stallion resonatesFrom start to finish, this book has legs." -- Newsweek
"Mr. Leerhsen's thoroughly entertaining history betrays no trace of the sentimentality that so often adheres to tales of bygone sports heroes[Crazy Good] has the moments of sweetness and triumph that only a sports story can provide. Not least among the triumphs is the fact that, with Mr. Leerhsen's help, Dan Patch at long last has been given his due." -- Wall Street Journal
"Leerhsen vividly recounts Dan-mania and digs up dirt on the colorful gamblers and shady horse handlers of the 1900s. In rescuing Dan from the mists of history, he also draws a wry, moving account of America's first epidemic of sports fever." -- Entertainment Weekly
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Crazy Good: The True Story of Dan Patch, the Most Famous Horse in America
Available from Amazon
Price: $17.16
Updated on 10-12-2008
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