13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
If this is the 'official' Derby history, I'll eat my racing goggles!, July 25, 2008
This review is from: Two Minutes to Glory: The Official History of the Kentucky Derby (Hardcover)
Pamela K. Brodowsky, author of "Poker with the Girls: How to Deal the Perfect Poker Party" and Tom Philbin, author of "How to Hire a Home Improvement Contractor without Getting Chiseled" have banded together to write "Two Minutes to Glory" which purports to be `The Official History of the Kentucky Derby,' in cooperation with Churchill Downs, Inc.
The reason I say `purports to be' is that this book is filled with mistakes. I finally started marking them with green sticky notes about three-quarters of the way through, and by the time I was finished, "Two Minutes to Glory" bristled like a pea-green porcupine.
Just to name a few:
* Ruffian was never elected `Horse of the Year' (even though she should have been). Nor did she die on the track. I still remember listening to the radio late into the night after her match race with Foolish Pleasure to see if she survived her surgery.
* Seattle Slew's jockey was named Jean Cruguet not `Jan Cruguet.'
* When Spectacular Bid went to post in the 1979 Derby, he had not won all ten of his previous races. He was unplaced in the Tyro (08/02/78) and second in the Dover (08/20/78).
* Arthur Hancock III owns Stone Farm, not Stoner Farm
* Mrs. Frances Genter didn't die `before the next Derby' after Unbridled won for her in 1990. She died in November, 1992. Nor did she sit `in a wheelchair near the railing' when trainer Carl Nafzger announced the race for her. She was standing next to him in the grandstand.
* When speaking of Smarty Jones, the authors state that "he is related to Triple Crown winners Funny Cide, Afleet Alex, Fusaichi Pegasus, Foolish Pleasure, Secretariat, Count Fleet, Northern Dancer, and Man `o War..." Evidently there have been 17 Triple Crown winners, not just 11.
The writing style is breezy, although sometimes my attention was caught by the weird English rather than the story. Why did the authors keep calling Mrs. Penny Chenery `the lady with the iron stomach'? What is a `ganglia of horses'?
"Two Minutes to Glory" was fun to read but Churchill Downs, Inc. should have edited its text before letting the authors call it "The Official History of the Kentucky Derby."
Jim Bolus's "Run for the Roses" is a more accurate history of America's greatest Thoroughbred race, although it was published back in 1974. Another good book on the subject is "The Most Glorious Crown" by Marvin Drager, which tells the stories of America's 11 (not 17!) Triple Crown winners (be sure to get the version with the DVD "Win, Place, Show").
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Good writers are out of work, and this gets published, July 11, 2007
This review is from: Two Minutes to Glory: The Official History of the Kentucky Derby (Hardcover)
I'll give this two stars for the concrete information it presents, with racing charts, horse statistics and photographs of every winner, even in the early days. But this is one of the most poorly-written books I have ever read; there are times when it seems more like a grade school English assignment than a published reference book.
Sentence structure is frequently awkward, confusing, or hard to follow; comments that the authors seem to find cute are ridiculously infantile (do they really need to describe a poor field as running the "Palookaville Memorial"?); black stablehands are Stepinfetchit cartoon characters; and well-known racing facts are disregarded, replaced with incorrect assumptions.
The individual race recaps are sometimes neat and concise, but more often than not, they ramble into silliness (there's a comment that famous horse thief Pancho Villa, visiting the Derby, never finds out where the winner retired two years later, as if we expected he'd track him down), or miss key information that readers would be more likely to find of interest. Why not mention also-rans that later gained fame, or a horse's effect on the sport, for example? Go to 1930, and you'd never know Gallant Fox won the Triple Crown; go to 1964, and there's no mention of Northern Dancer's breeding legacy. And if you start a drinking game for every time you read the phrases "as it were" or "as they say", you'll be drunk long before you get to Swaps and Nashua - and that famous rivalry isn't even mentioned.
This could have been a triumph of historical data, brought to life with a deft hand; instead, it reads as if two people, with almost no knowledge of the rich history of horse racing, sat down with racing charts and newspaper articles, and tried to make a story of them. Beautifully bound and illustrated, this volume is ultimately a horrible disappointment.
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5 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great book about a great race!, May 11, 2007
This review is from: Two Minutes to Glory: The Official History of the Kentucky Derby (Hardcover)
If you love the ponies, and if you get caught up in the all day pagentry of the Derby, then this book is a must have. It's history, traditions, human/equine stories and really just a labor of love on the part of the authors for one of the greatest horse races ever. It's a great read, and if you have been watching the Derby for years it will bring back some memories of the people and the horses.
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