A confounding account of the author’s life in horse racing.
In this hybrid work of spiritualism, memoir, and nonfiction, debut author Ragsdale takes the reader through his history with the sport of horse racing, from his younger years sneaking away from jobs for a few hours at the track to his later ownership of multiple thoroughbreds.
Most of Ragsdale’s horses proved to cost more money than they ever made, though one, the eponymous Thar She Blows, ended up being quite profitable after a high initial investment in medical bills. Between Ragsdale’s accounts of various horses and tracks, he describes the various breeds of horses that are raced (quarter horses, thoroughbreds), the winnings breakdown for various states, and why donkeys make the best companion animals. He also begins and ends each chapter (or “race,” as he calls them) with equine-related Bible passages. Ragsdale’s career as an owner came to an end after his “female racing companion,” Barbara, injured herself in a paddock and they decided to sell their final horse. Ragsdale’s love of horses certainly comes across, and he seasons his memoir with wry humor: “In the beginning was the WORD. Then our creator made a creative man and woman and then came the horse. Our Creator always goes first class and provided man and woman with a means of transportation. Sometimes a donkey.” On the whole, however, his writing is difficult to read; it leaps from topic to topic with little logical organization. There is no overarching narrative in the book (or even smaller narratives within the chapters). The reader gets little sense of what Ragsdale learned from his decades around horse racing or what wisdom he wishes to impart. The religiosity within the text may alienate secular readers, but it’s never dogmatic: Bible passages were seemingly chosen because they featured the word “horse.” It’s difficult to imagine that the audience for this book would extend beyond the horse racing community in the Louisiana/East Texas area.
A confounding account of the author’s life in horse racing.Pub Date: March 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5049-7457-8
Page Count: 108
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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