A poignant and thorough look at a real-life horse-racing mystery.
Kray presents a true-crime book, set in the high-stakes world of horse racing and breeding, about the life and tragic death of a thoroughbred racehorse in the 1970s.
Horse-racing aficionados, and even some who have only a passing familiarity with sport, will know the name Alydar. The championship steed came in second to the champion thoroughbred Affirmed in all three of 1978’s Triple Crown races: the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes. Those races are covered in exciting detail in this nonfiction account, but it’s the events of Nov. 13-15, 1990, that form the crux of this work. During that period, Alydar, then retired and the top breeding stallion in the United States, was injured in his stall at Kentucky’s Calumet Farm and then euthanized. Although $36.5 million was paid out in insurance, there were questions raised about Alydar’s death that wouldn’t become public until more than a decade later. The author, an attorney specializing in animal law, presents a theory that the horse was killed for monetary gain. Kray details an official investigation, an insurance-fraud trial, and his own search for the truth in which he painstakingly interviewed key players to reconstruct what might have happened that fateful night in Alydar’s stall. It’s a heartbreaking but compelling story, meticulously researched and skillfully written. Kray’s love of horse racing shines in his recaps of races and equine descriptions, and his pacing and storytelling skills make this true-crime work feel like a gripping thriller. The fraud trial put two men behind bars, but no one was ever tried for the death of Alydar, and the last portion of this book offers a poignant closing argument that Kray says he would have made if he’d tried the case: “Today, I am representing Alydar, who never had a voice of his own. Today, I will be his voice,” he says, in part, to his imaginary jury. “Today will be his day. He deserves that, at the very least.” With this book, Kray has indeed given Alydar his day.
A poignant and thorough look at a real-life horse-racing mystery.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9798987213803
Page Count: 346
Publisher: Live Oak Press
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A smart, rewarding consideration of football’s popularity—and eventual downfall.
A wide-ranging writer on his football fixation.
Is our biggest spectator sport “a practical means for understanding American life”? Klosterman thinks so, backing it up with funny, thought-provoking essays about TV coverage, ethical quandaries, and the rules themselves. Yet those who believe it’s a brutal relic of a less enlightened era need only wait, “because football is doomed.” Marshalling his customary blend of learned and low-culture references—Noam Chomsky, meet AC/DC—Klosterman offers an “expository obituary” of a game whose current “monocultural grip” will baffle future generations. He forecasts that economic and social forces—the NFL’s “cultivation of revenue,” changes in advertising, et al.—will end its cultural centrality. It’s hard to imagine a time when “football stops and no one cares,” but Klosterman cites an instructive precedent. Horse racing was broadly popular a century ago, when horses were more common in daily life. But that’s no longer true, and fandom has plummeted. With youth participation on a similar trajectory, Klosterman foresees a time when fewer people have a personal connection to football, rendering it a “niche” pursuit. Until then, the sport gives us much to consider, with Klosterman as our well-informed guide. Basketball is more “elegant,” but “football is the best television product ever,” its breaks between plays—“the intensity and the nothingness,” à la Sartre—provide thrills and space for reflection or conversation. For its part, the increasing “intellectual density” of the game, particularly for quarterbacks, mirrors a broader culture marked by an “ongoing escalation of corporate and technological control.” Klosterman also has compelling, counterintuitive takes on football gambling, GOAT debates, and how one major college football coach reminds him of “Laura Ingalls Wilder’s much‑loved Little House novels.” A beloved sport’s eventual death spiral has seldom been so entertaining.
A smart, rewarding consideration of football’s popularity—and eventual downfall.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593490648
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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