Eyewitness: Horse

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Summary: With this DK book you can both look and learn about horses
Review: Having spent this week watching "Seabiscuit," "The Story of Seabiscuit," and "Seabiscuit: The Lost Documentary," it seemed like this would be a good time to find out more about the world of horses. My experience with horses in the real world is rather limited (I rode one on a Caribbean island, but it knew I was a weak master and did not want to obey). Fortunately, Juliet Clutton-Brock's look at "Horses" for the Dorling Kindersley Eyewitness Books series provides an informative guide to the world of horses and ponies.

There is a lot of information crammed into this volume, beginning with the first paragraph describing the horse family where we learn that the nearest relative to horses, asses, and zebras are the rhinoceroses and tapirs, and that a pony is a horse that has a height of less than 14.2 hands. The spectrum is demonstrated with a picture of the Shetland pony (8 hands) next to a Shire horse (19.2 hands). As is always the case with these DK Eyewitness volumes, each chapter consists of a two-page spread offering one main paragraph of text and then a series of illustrations with detailed captions. Clutton-Brock covers how horses evolved, looks at some of their ancient ancestors, and shows how the teeth change over the life of the horse. The bulk of the book looks at the various types of horses, from donkeys, mules and hinnies to war-horses, heavy horses, and sporting horses, as well as the various jobs horses have had in human history. Young readers will learn about the names for the different colors of horses and their markings, as well as how the horse changed life in North America once they were reintroduced by Columbus. As always the rich illustrations will get a lot of the attention, showing us ancient art depicting horses, dozens of different breeds, and a wide variety of the vehicles that horses have drawn.

About the only thing that seems to be missing from this rather comprehensive introduction to the horse are mention and pictures of some of the more famous horses from history. But you will not find mention or a picture of the likes of Secretariat or Man-O-War within these pages. When we are shown a horse whose name is remembered, such as Bucephalus, Rosinante, Black Bess, and Marnego, it is because of their riders (Alexander the Great, Don Quixote, Dick Turpin, and Napoleon Bonaparate respectively). But then, it was the famous horses of history and fiction, from Traveler to the Black Stallion, that I already knew about before I picked up this look at "Horses," so it is hard to criticize a book for performing its main function of providing new information instead of telling you what you already know. Whatever you know about horses, this book will teach you more.

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Summary: Picture Perfect -Horse of course
Review: This is a well planned and wonderfully illustrated book on horses, with many great rare photos of exotic members of the horse family. I was truly delighted to find good close up pictures of equines that are on the endangered list and and text written in easy to understand english. For the child or the adult this is a must for the horseman's library.