Customer Reviews

Native Dancer: The Grey Ghost: Hero of a Golden Age

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With the success of the book "Seabiscuit" by Laura Hillenbrand, more books are being issued of some of the great thoroughbred race horses of the 20th century. John Eisenberg, a newspaper journalist from Baltimore, has written a very good biography of Native Dancer, who was the first horse racing hero in the television age. Native Dancer was a huge gray colt who won all but one race in his career, but the race he lost was the biggest one of all, the Kentucky Derby in 1953.

Eisenberg tells the story of Native Dancer similarly to the way Hillenbrand told her story, focusing on the owner, trainer and jockey while weaving it with the personality of the horse and tying it in with the theme of the era (depression in Hillenbrand's case, the discovery of television in the Dancer's case).

The only criticisms are minor. His focus on Native Dancer's loss to Dark Star in the '53 Derby happens in the middle of the book and is so well written that the rest of the book basically pales in comparison. Whether it is fair or not, Native Dancer is famous because of his one loss, so the victories he had after that (including the final two jewels of the Triple Crown) just don't come off as very important.

But this book gave me a great appreciation of Native Dancer. I don't think we'll see a movie of his life like we will with Seabiscuit, but I do hope we'll see more horse racing books from Mr. Eisenberg in the future (he has another that is even better called "The Longest Shot" about 1992 Derby winner Lil E. Tee).

In 1953, Native Dancer, a grey, 3-year-old racehorse bred and owned by Alfred Vanderbilt, captured the hearts and imagination of America and was declared "one of the three most popular figures in the country," along with TV personalities Arthur Godfrey and Ed Sullivan. Winning an incredible twenty-one of his twenty-two races, he was only a few inches away from having a perfect record, losing that one race "by a nose." Horse of the Year in 1954, Native Dancer was an unprecedented choice to grace the cover of Time magazine in May, 1954, just before he retired from racing as a four-year-old.

Author John Eisenberg reports here on the horse, the stable, and all the individuals who were part of his illustrious career, explaining the circumstances which made Native Dancer the darling of the country. Seen by more race fans than any other racehorse in history, thanks to America's recent discovery of the joys of television, he stood out visually from the pack and became "America's first matinee idol." When he began racing in 1952, World War II had been over for only a few years, and the fifties were a decade in which "institutions were to be admired, not challenged." Americans "saw their country as wealthy and invincible," and Native Dancer became a symbol of this power. He was, in fact, so big and so powerful that when he ran, "you could draw a horizontal straight line from his airborne back feet to the tips of his forelegs," his stride measuring an incredible twenty-nine feet.

Having thoroughly researched every conceivable aspect of his story, Eisenberg writes with the journalistic brio of a true lover of horse-racing, and makes the horse, his stupendous bursts of speed out of the pack in the final seconds of his races, and the people surrounding him live again. Through newspaper accounts, photographs, step-by-step reconstructions of the races, interviews with the participants and their heirs, and personal stories by people who remember the horse and his quirks, he turns back the clock to a simpler era and recreates the spirit of the fifties when all the world looked bright. Though Native Dancer was never as lovable as Seabiscuit (and, in fact, once bit off the finger of someone he did not trust), he was a huge and positive presence, an immensely powerful racer who had a tremendous desire to win and the intelligence to know how hard he had to work to accomplish that win. Mary Whipple

Wow. This horse was an amzing grey. Native Dancer was a superb racehorse that did the things that went beyond people's expectations at the time. I was fully intrigued while reading this book. Just as many people would later argue that Riva Ridge should have been the ninth triple crown winner, that arguement should have sparked up that Native Dancer almost got the title. Losing the derby by a nose his only defeat. An amazing book on this speedy grey thoroughbred.

This is a well-written story of a great horse, but the story is more than just the horse itelf. The author does a fine job of providing insight and understanding into the cutural forces that shaped America and American horse racing during the time of Native Dancer's reign. Throughout the book, the author provides a contextual backdrop from which the reader can view the accomplishments of this great horse. Granted, the storyline is not as fairy-tale and movie-ready as Seabiscuit, but the accomplishments of the horse make this one fine read. What hinders the author is the timing of Native Dancer's solo loss. What saves the book is how the author keeps the reader's interest for the rest of the [post-loss] narrative. I am not a student of the horses, but this book was one I had a hard time putting down.

Eisnberg takes you back, all the way back to Native Dancer himself's stall and tells you this story as if you were there, watching it all happen. I don't know about anyone else, but this book was very real to me. Maybe some need to re-read it to get the vivid picture that is immediately put into your mind, from start to finish with this book. This horse was a great horse. A once-defeated and ran more than Man o' War did. You only need to win by enough to win, and don't over-exert or you lose some horse. Native Dancer comes to me as a horse ahead of his time. The colt is strikingly intelligent and is humbled with a #7 ranking of all time. I clearly enjoy this book. Highly reccomended for horse racing historians.

Until discovering this fine book, I had forgotten just how good a horse was Native Dancer. Holy smokes! This horse has to be ranked in the top handful of racehorses of all time. Like Man `o War, he was only beaten once, and that was a fluke. The "Grey Ghost" (Native Dancer) not only won repeatedly but did so in dramatic form with one incredible come-from-behind effort after another. Reading about all his exciting races was a thrill.

I don't know if there are many books which describe the horse racing scene in the 1950s so this was very eye-opening for me. For instance, I can't believe that racing bigwigs (for lack of a better word) would downgrade and discourage the use of television as promoting their sport. Boy, they dropped the ball on that one, bigtime, especially since more people got to look at Native Dancer because of TV than any horse before. That includes the likes Man `War, Sir Barton, Seabiscuit, War Admiral, Whirlaway, Citation and the rest of history's great horses prior to 1953.

Whatever, John Eisenburg's book gives us a wonderful stories of the Vanderbilt family, who owned the bred the horse; trainer Bill Winfrey, jockey Eric Guerin and others. Like many good horse racing books, I found the chapters on the jockeys the most interesting.

I thought this book was one of the better reads I've had on this great sport. This is not an easy book to find but you can get it at a terrific price here at Amazon under the "used and new available" heading near the top of the page.

In 1953, Native Dancer, a grey, 3-year-old racehorse bred and owned by Alfred Vanderbilt, captured the hearts and imagination of America and was declared "one of the three most popular figures in the country," along with TV personalities Arthur Godfrey and Ed Sullivan. Winning an incredible twenty-one of his twenty-two races, he was only a few inches away from having a perfect record, losing that one race "by a nose." Horse of the Year in 1954, Native Dancer was an unprecedented choice to grace the cover of Time magazine in May, 1954, just before he retired from racing as a four-year-old.

Author John Eisenberg reports here on the horse, the stable, and all the individuals who were part of his illustrious career, explaining the circumstances which made Native Dancer the darling of the country. Seen by more race fans than any other racehorse in history, thanks to America's recent discovery of the joys of television, he stood out visually from the pack and became "America's first matinee idol." When he began racing in 1952, World War II had been over for only a few years, and the fifties were a decade in which "institutions were to be admired, not challenged." Americans "saw their country as wealthy and invincible," and Native Dancer became a symbol of this power. He was, in fact, so big and so powerful that when he ran, "you could draw a horizontal straight line from his airborne back feet to the tips of his forelegs," his stride measuring an incredible twenty-nine feet.

Having thoroughly researched every conceivable aspect of his story, Eisenberg writes with the journalistic brio of a true lover of horse-racing, and makes the horse, his stupendous bursts of speed out of the pack in the final seconds of his races, and the people surrounding him live again. Through newspaper accounts, photographs, step-by-step reconstructions of the races, interviews with the participants and their heirs, and personal stories by people who remember the horse and his quirks, he turns back the clock to a simpler era and recreates the spirit of the fifties when all the world looked bright. Though Native Dancer was never as lovable as Seabiscuit (and, in fact, once bit off the finger of someone he did not trust), he was a huge and positive presence, an immensely powerful racer who had a tremendous desire to win and the intelligence to know how hard he had to work to accomplish that win. Mary Whipple

not as brilliant as nack's secretariat, the best sports bio ever written...but definitely not as uselessly poor as 'horse of a different color' by village idiot squires, or 'three strides before the wire' by mitchell, or 'citation' by georgeff.
the author doesn't get too in-depth of the life of native dancer, which i suppose is a problem with any book written years after the events took place (this is a particularly bad problem in the citation book). the author seems to continually re-introduce doubt about the superiority of native dancer, by writing what others have opined, namely that native dancer didn't often win crushingly by many lengths (like secretariat's belmont) and that he seemed to have a worrying tendency to pull up once he was ahead in the stretch. but all in all, this is a fine bio on a fabulous racehorse with only one loss in a magnificent career (the second-best gray horse ever (no.1 the wonderhorse spectacular bid)).

I have just recently become the owner of a grey thoroughbred, the information about this racing great was of interest to me and i found the book informative and enjoyable -

A good little work of history regarding the horse Native Dancer. A horse that became even more famous because of his gray coloring and the contrast that gave him on the new fangled device in the early 1950's that we call television. Despite having lost the Kentucky Derby and having a reputation of being a lazy horse toward the finish once he knew he had the victory, his record crunchy times and his later huge winning progeny definitely make him one of the better horses of the last century, some accounts placing him as high as 3rd (even without a triple crown). Good backgrounding for where America is and what is going socially and such at the time too. Only thing I would say is, maybe written at a bit of an elementary level at times.