Horse People: Scenes from the Riding Life FROM THE PUBLISHER
Michael Korda's Horse People is the story - sometimes hilariously funny, sometimes sad and moving, always shrewdly observed - of a lifetime love affair with horses, and about the bonds that have linked humans with horses for more than ten thousand years. It is filled with intimate portraits of the kind of people, rich or poor, Eastern or Western, famous or humble, whose lives continue to revolve around the horse.
FROM THE CRITICS
The New York Times
Horse people, like yacht racers or Nascar enthusiasts and members of cults everywhere, can seem awfully myopic to civilians, their concerns so far beyond the ken of normal life it's hard to get a pulse going for them. And yet, there are times when the drama of the thing -- and there are dramas -- leaks air into this hermetically sealed environment. Think of this year's horsey heroes -- Seabiscuit and Funny Cide -- their improbable, riveting stories, their quirky and engaging human handlers. In this, the Year of the Horse, Korda's timing is perfect. And, happily, there are quirky and engaging humans all through Horse People. And a few horsey heroes.
— Penelope Green
The Washington Post
Korda's a lovely raconteur -- self-deprecating, informative, poignant, richly funny. He gives us not a gallop but a mosey through the equine world, illustrated in part with his own charming drawings. — Diana McLellan
Publishers Weekly
Korda (Country Matters; Charmed Lives) recounts in his trademark affable style a growing involvement over decades with horses and the people who ride them. Beginning with his youth, and following with his reconnection to the horse world when he takes his son to lessons, Korda relates how horses changed his life: he met his current wife, Margaret, at New York City's Claremont Riding Academy, and eventually they purchased a home in Dutchess County with grounds to accommodate a growing number of horses. In one hilarious episode, Korda, the editor-in-chief at Simon & Schuster, visits an author in Middleburg, Va., and finds himself, unprepared, on a foxhunting horse jumping over walls and into backyards. He begins to analyze the symbolism of horses ("the horse stood... for social superiority, mobility, and not getting your feet wet and muddy like ordinary folk"), but this meditation is an exception, as Korda favors the anecdote and the caricature. There are rather too many "movers and shakers" for this book to live up to the diversity implied by its title, and while he briefly raises moral questions (about foxhunting, for example), he largely ignores the sociopolitical and emotional aspects of the horse-human relationship. He takes his reader on the occasional jaunt through less tony neighborhoods (with a veterinarian in Rhinebeck, N.Y.; to a rodeo in Archer City, Tex., with Larry McMurtry; and to a correctional facility's horse farm), but he tends to focus on places like Southlands, a privately owned facility in Dutchess County. While the book is more a series of vignettes than a full narrative, Korda's humor will be a delight to anyone who loves the world of riding. (Nov.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
In books past, Korda, Simon & Schuster's editor in chief, has ranged from getting and keeping Power! to the Charmed Lives of his fabled family. Here, he explores something especially near and dear to his heart: the riding life and the people who love it. Korda details his rediscovery of riding when he decided that his young son needed lessons (he himself had ridden as a child in England), then paints incisive portraits of a host of fascinating "horse people," from an instructor who insists on proper riding attire to the woman author who invites him to ride with her hunt. We also learn how he romanced his second wife through riding. The world Korda depicts is rarefied indeed, and though to his credit he doesn't share the snootier attitudes of some of its inhabitants, he knows it well enough to make it engrossing. What's missing here is the rapturous joy of riding through a field, wind in your hair and a huge, gorgeous animal rolling along beneath you-an experience anyone can have, even in dirty jeans. For public libraries that serve horse people.-Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal" Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
In this catalogue of horses and horse folk who have passed through the author's life, the animals possess tactility while the people are simply too-too. For someone who has "always tried to avoid a single-minded obsession about horses," veteran editor and author Korda (Another Life, 1999, etc.) has certainly spent a fair amount of time around the beasts and has thought long, hard, and well about their place in the world, in particular their relationship to humans. So he can be counted among those people who "love horses, or who know horses, or who make their living out of horses, or who just can't imagine what their lives would be like without horses." Korda's hungry curiosity to get into a horse's head and his interest in the social history of equestrianism give Horse People its charm and energy. He tells us much here about conformation and disposition, pasterns that are too long, the irregularity of hooves, fitting "within the square," enveloping all of it in a sense of affection. Less attractive is the depthless snobbishness of this world inhabited by the super-well-groomed super-rich, "old-school, good-looking, soft-spoken, wealthy, with perfect manners and a wardrobe full of the kind of country clothes Ralph Lauren has since made a fortune imitating." (Not that they don't have their travails: "Sheila, like many horse people, had given way to globalism, in the sense that the bulk of her barn help was Mexican.") A moderate windiness is excusable considering the sheer volume of material, but not such perfume-thick, studied prose as the "flash of orange, moving slowly" and "somewhere there is a picture of me on a small, shaggy pony at the age of about six," especially when the photo isreproduced a half-inch below. Sometimes achingly snooty, but in his stride Korda brings an engagingly lofty hand, both intimate and erudite, to the horses that have shaped his life. (17 line drawings by the author, 24 b&w photos)
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