Thoroughbred Nation: Making America at the Racetrack, 1791-1900 - Hardcover

Zacek, Natalie A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0807182826 ISBN 13: 9780807182826

Verlag: Louisiana State University Press, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

From the colonial era to the beginning of the twentieth century, horse racing was by far the most popular sport in America. Great numbers of Americans and overseas visitors flocked to the nation’s tracks, and others avidly followed the sport in both general-interest newspapers and specialized periodicals.

Thoroughbred Nation offers a detailed yet panoramic view of thoroughbred racing in the United States, following the sport from its origins in colonial Virginia and South Carolina to its boom in the Lower Mississippi Valley, and then from its post–Civil War rebirth in New York City and Saratoga Springs to its opulent mythologization of the “Old South” at Louisville’s Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby. Natalie A. Zacek introduces readers to an unforgettable cast of characters, from “plungers” such as Virginia plantation owner William Ransom Johnson (known as the “Napoleon of the Turf”) and Wall Street financier James R. Keene (who would wager a fortune on the outcome of a single competition) to the jockeys, trainers, and grooms, most of whom were African American. While their names are no longer known, their work was essential to the sport. Zacek also details the careers of remarkable, though scarcely remembered, horses, whose achievements made them as famous in their day as more recent equine celebrities such as Seabiscuit or Secretariat.

Based upon exhaustive research in print and visual sources from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States, Thoroughbred Nation will be of interest both to those who love the sport of horse racing for its own sake and to those who are fascinated by how this pastime reflects and influences American identities.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Natalie A. Zacek is a senior lecturer in American studies at the University of Manchester. Her previous book, Settler Society in the English Leeward Islands, 1670–1776, won the Royal Historical Society’s Gladstone Book Prize.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Louisiana State University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0807182826
• ISBN 13: 9780807182826
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 368
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar