Rating: 
Summary: could have been great...
Review: ...if she didn't keep talking about herself and her love buddy, chuck. look lady, people want to read a racing book only about the horses, jockeys, and trainers (and we definitely couldn't care any less about your life). this book is o.k. if you totally skip any sections where she mentions herself (easy to do, and they contain absolutely nothing of value or relatedness to the grander story of charismatic's attempted run for the triple crown), and if you can overlook her sappy prose (which tries to imitate the painfully overly-florid writing of the seabiscuit author, both who were evidently gunning hard for the old lady book club dollar).
Rating: 
Summary: A Good Horsey Read
Review: A well written biographical account of the life of Chris Antley and the Triple Crown chase by Charismatic. Also, many lessons in horse racing and insights about trainers and owners. This is an easy read which takes you on the roller coaster of a jockey's life, including pain, victory, the mysteries and a battle of ego. I recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in horses. Read it back to back with Jane Smiley's "Horse Heaven"(fiction) and you will truly understand the heaven and hell of racing.
Rating: 
Summary: Not even close to the wire
Review: After paying good money for a new copy of this book, I felt downright gypped. Page after page is filled with stodgy writing and tedious information that reads like a compilation of disconnected facts, records and quotes rather than a continuous story. The many obvious factual mistakes that litter the pages also add to the feeling that this is the product of a writer whose main concern was quantity rather than quality; the product of a writer who was counting on the subject matter rather than the writing to be the main draw. Not recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: A Pleasant Surprise
Review: After reading Three Strides before The Wire, I was astounded that Ms. Mitchell managed to capture the essence of the Thoroughbred world from a perspective of someone who was basically an outsider.
Ms. Mitchell's in depth research reached far beyond what the normal racing press media presents to the public.
She managed to weave her personal circumstances into the story that augmented and intertwined with what happened from the beginning of all concerned in the wonderful story of Charismatic, and his connections.
Three Strides Before The Wire reads like a great suspense novel, even tough I knew the outcome.
Rating:
Summary: What a tragedy....
Review: Chris Antley is clearly someone who just couldn't handle his own success or his failures. He was W-A-Y too dependent/caught up in the fast life of booze & drugs and He paid dearly for it. Now on the other hand... Charismatic-what a horse!! I loved this book and I'm a horse guy! You can always find me at Belmont, The Big A or Calder!! I think the book was easy to read and you don't have to know about horse racing to enjoy it.
Rating:
Summary: Wasted Opportunity
Review: Elizabeth Mitchell manages to take the ingredients for what should be a wonderful horse story and make it utterly boring. Moreover, she can't get her facts straight - - the book contains at least a few factual errors and contradictions that even a mediocre editor should have picked up. If you're looking for a refreshing new work on the subject of horse racing, check out "My Racing Heart" by Nan Mooney, released earlier this year, and you won't be disappointed. Ms. Mitchell should stick to writing short pieces at Newsweek.
Rating: 
Summary: Good try, but falls short.
Review: Elizabeth Mitchell, Three Strides Before the Wire: The Dark and Beautiful World of Horse Racing (Hyperion, 2002)No less a personage than Tom Wolfe proclaims on the back cover of this book that Elizabeth Mitchell is the perfect person to tell the story of the meteoric rise of a no-name colt called Charismatic in 1999 from the claiming ranks to missing the Triple Crown by a fractured sesamoid a few feet before the finish line of the Belmont Stakes. Which may well be true. It is unfortunate, however, that the result comes off as an unsuccessful mating between the recent literary smash Seabiscuit: The Making of a Legend and the much less-known and much finer Bill Barich book Laughing in the Hills, which remains to this day the finest racing book ever published. This is not to knock Mitchell's work. She takes the same basic tack Hillenbrand did in Seabiscuit, using each chapter to focus on a specific connection: the jockey, the owners, the trainer, the horse, tracing the history of each as they got closer to Derby Day 1999, and then combining them all to go through the Triple Crown. Where she crosses into Barich territory is in the addition of personal experience, and her own story as it intermeshed with that of Charismatic's connections. These sections didn't ring quite right, for reasons unknown. There are also a number of factual errors therein; most wouldn't be caught by non-racing fans, but there are a few that glare (in one particularly nasty one, jerry Bailey is on a horse as that horse loads into the gate, and around the far turn, said horse is being ridden by Gary Stevens. Not the same guy, even if all jocks look alike to you). Better to start with Hillenbrand and Barich, and come to this afterwards. ** ½
Rating:
Summary: I need an immediate PROZAC subscription to recover from this
Review: Excellent book - more enjoyed by those who followed steed
and rider during that fabled run at the triple crown in 1999.
Even the most callous of readers will empathize with the Author's
personal tragedy which in an obtuse way, mirrored the subject
matter pertaining to jockey Antley and Charismatic.
Human frailty is evident all through this book. Several mistakes in the narrative included listing the Preakness
being run at a distance of 1 mile and 3/8ths, when the actual
distance for the race is 1 mile and 3/16ths; the "buckle" holding
the saddle is better known at a girth, and in racetrack parlance,
a horses odds aren't the "worst" (indeed, bad odds would mean
they were low, not high) they would have been the "highest" odds. In a way, this makes the narrative more endearing as it's clear
the author is not a hardened horse player, but generally a
newcomer just acquiring full knowledge what is the greatest game
sport can ever know. I was at 'Anita one day during what was to be the Ant Man's final
comeback. In the paddock, just as Antley got a leg up, I yelled
"you're back, Ant Man!" He just smiled and nodded. He was
one of the few jockeys that could sway me to bet his horse in
the blind,even if the straight dope indicated his competitors had him out gunned.... What a talent that guy was. I loved the book -- it choked me up.
Rating:
Summary: Embarassingly Bad
Review: I can't honestly review this entire book because I only made it half-way through before I decided to give up. It's an excruciating journey, where amateurish writing and dull information and platitudes are forced down the reader's throat like cough medicine. A lot of research obviously went into this book, and in more capable hands I'm convinced could have made for a great story. Mitchell drops the ball, though, and makes a mess of it all, patching her research and her various story-lines together with all the stitches showing. Two great books I'd recommend instead (if you haven't already read them) are Kevin Conley's Stud, and of course the young Hillenbrand's unbeatable Seabiscuit.
Rating:
Summary: Hokey and irritating
Review: I did what no responsible reader should do - I judged a book by its cover. I give the designer of this cover five stars for the artistry that made me plunge into what I thought would be a genuinely dark and beautiful glimpse into the world of horse racing. Unfortunately, this book's flaws are rampant. Most noticeably, the style is stilted, juvenile, and just plain hokey. It alternates between reading like a sixth grade textbook and a young-adult sports biography. The passages about the history of man and horses and the biology of breeding are so incredibly tedious that I nearly fell asleep until I decided to skim right past them. The other potentially more promising narrative bits felt like some kind of poorly edited and overly extended elementary school presentation on horses - like some kids reading off of index cards filled with information they carefully collected over many months time. I found the bits about the narrator's dying boyfriend to be cloying and out of place. They say non-fiction writing is 80% research, 20% writing. I felt like this was 95% research and 5% writing. Most of the book feels like a clumsy compilation of facts, rather than a skillfully written, contiguous narrative. Some passages also seem to preach a bizarre and irritating superstitious-ness, where the narrator reads into every coincidence as some sign that she has psychic abilities. This was very strange to me and made me distrust many of her observations. What confuses me most is who the intended audience for this book is. Adults with some passing curiosity about horseracing? I just didn't get it. The reading level and style felt geared more toward young teenagers, while the subject-matter seemed geared toward adults. Whatever the intended audience, this was an overall clunky read narrated by someone who might believe in magic, but unfortunately hasn't the slightest clue how to generate it.
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