<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Wild Ride: A Wild Read
Review: An intriguing, non-fictional tale of corporate greed and thoroughbred racing in the 1980's against the backdrop of the history of the great Kentucky racing stable of Calumet.The characters include a multi-million dollar race horse,Alydar---famous for being second to 1978 Triple Crown Winner Affirmed, heirs of Warren Wright who took their inheritance for granted and ignored the source of their riches---Calumet, the banks who continued to loan millions of dollars to Calumet solely on the value of their star stallion Alydar. Even if you are not a fan of thoroughbred horses, the story is as much a moral tale for the 90's as it was for the 80's. The story moves fast, and is particulary fascinating when the author flashes back to the heydey of Calumet. The antidote retold by the author describing how Alydar was named is particularly amusing. The painstaking research into the where to's and how to's of syndicating breeding shares to star stallions and borrowing money against shares can be dull reading if you are not interested, but can be skimmed over since this is not the focus of the book. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: A must read for Thoroughbred historians
Review: Reads like a novel. An interesting peek inside one of the nation's most famous farms. Our copy has made the rounds of our barn many times, each border has read it at least twice. At times "Wild Ride" is sad, almost gut-wrenching, sometimes it can be rather amusing, and other times it reads like a Dick Francis murder mystery. This book belongs on every horseperson's desk. A valuable insight into early Thoroughbred history.
Rating:
Summary: The best of investigative reporting
Review: The climax of this powerful narrative is the mysterious death of Alydar, Calumet Farm's famous racing stallion, insured for $36.5 million. The book is a thoughtful, probing account of mushrooming greed and moral confusion. Auerbach shows how speculative financing created a situation in which Alydar was worth more dead than alive. Reading this carefully documented story, one wonders why the it never got fully told on the evening news. It is a sad, shocking story, partly because it seems to foreshadow the larger consequences of speculative fever, of an economy in which greed is the ultimate value and the chasm between poor and wealthy grows wider every day. But the fact that Auerbach's book has led to two governmental investigations and subsequent indictments suggests that she has tapped into a kind of moral sense in our society that bodes well for the future. Powerful writing.
Rating:
Summary: A murder mystery yet to be solved
Review: WILD RIDE, by Ann Hagedorn Auerbach, (New York: Henry Holt, 1994) reads like the murder mystery that it very likely is. Subtitled "The Rise and Tragic Fall of Calumet Farm, Inc., America's Premier Racing Dynasty," the book is the work of a journalist who specializes in reporting about white collar crime. But Auerbach is more than that: she is an admirer of horses also. The tragic hero of WILD RIDE is Alydar, one of the foremost stallions in american racing history, who was euthanized in November, 1990 after breaking a hind leg in his stall. While offering no definitive prrof that Alydarwas intentionally and fatally injured to collect $36.5-million in insurance proceeds, Auerbach examines the incident in extreme detail and weaves the death of the stallion into her exhaustive account of the management of Calumet during the tenure of chief executive officer J.T. Lundy. although the book is currently out of print, the recent reopening of the Alydar investigation may change that. In any case, WILD RIDE would make a marvelous primer for anyone who hopes to follow the course of the current federal probe into the stallion's death.
<< 1 >>
| 
