deftly leaves her readers nostalgic for the past. Strangely, while she writes about an earlier population seeking escape from their dreary lives, she creates a need for escapism into the past for the modern reader who covets a more pastoral moment.

Recreating history can be an arduous task, particularly if information is obtained primarily through the oral recounting of events from those who lived through the period. Oral history, and particularly retrospective oral history, must always be somewhat suspect due to the passage of time and the age of those reporting. Witnesses and participants often embellish the banality of their actual experience. On the other hand, their anecdotes add a measure of local color and a sense of immediacy that help the reader almost feel the movement of the horse, the pounding of the hooves, the cheers and boos of the fans, and the aroma of the stalls.

If the people had not really existed and if the book were fiction, it would be a simple task to critique the author for dealing in stereotypes and for creating flat characters that represent certain attributes or characteristics. Although the cast was not created as such, Hillenbrand imbues each with a humanity and moral quality that raises the principals in the story from the dust of history. Yet, each is representative of something bigger than a single individual. Among other stock characters in the work, there is the outsider, living on the periphery of civilization (Smith); the waif, surviving by his wits (Pollard); the self-made millionaire, personification of the American dream (Howard); and the underdog, who conquers all the odds against him and succeeds due to sheer pluck and perseverance (Seabiscuit).

It was a time when men were men, an era when people could live off the land, outside the confines of cities and materialistic trappings. The trainer Smith, although precipitously balanced between two eras, is the archetypal cowboy, the strong and silent Gary Cooper type, as well as the original "horse whisperer." Balancing his gruff and taciturn demeanor around other people, his tender coaxing of animals reveals his thinly veiled gentle nature and warm heart. From Hillenbrand's depiction, Smith could be the prototype for every cowpoke who ever stumbled into Dodge City. Pollard, as a virtual orphan and a young man of literary acumen, is cast upon an uncaring world to make his own way. A graduate of the school of hard knocks, he is categorized as the quintessential underdog, arousing pathos and empathy and becoming an easy character to cheer to victory. Even Howard, the owner of Seabiscuit and one of the nation's wealthiest men at the time, is depicted as one who struggled to make his way, a self-made man created through grit and ingenuity, the cornerstones of the American dream. They are rough-and-tumble men whose lives collide in a rough-and-tumble world, thus illuminating the survivor theme present in all great western motifs. In addition, the hero of the piece, an irascible thoroughbred built, Hillenbrand says, like "a cinder block" and enamored of eating and sleeping, rises from obscurity to become a national treasure. It is the stuff from which fairy tales and Hollywood are made.

More than a happy little book about perseverance, though, Hillenbrand has created a portrait of an era—a time in which the media began to infiltrate lives and living rooms to create a nation of spectators. Much of modern popular culture, from twenty-four-hour sports channels to the merchandising of athletes, can trace its origins to the period about which she writes. In addition, the work reveals the breadth of the chasm among classes through clearly delineated verbal portraits of each of the primary characters.

Hillenbrand also delves into the darker side of the sport as she explores in graphic detail the life behind the track. Jockeys, treated much like slaves, were frequently little more than commodities and often suffered illness or disability due to the self-imposed abuse required to meet weight requirements. It is ironic that while the horses were being pampered and catered to, the humans who guided them across finish lines were encouraged to starve themselves, forced to sleep in barn stalls, and used as currency in games of cards between stable owners.

Although a book about the sport of horse races and expertise is typically aligned with sport literature, and a book that features an animal as its central figure is typically aligned with children's literature, Seabiscuit is much more than either category would suggest. Seabiscuit: An American Legend transcends the pigeonholed genres created by critics and English professors; it is a story of creating possibility from impossibility, a lauding of persistence and a celebration of life. If it were not based in fact, the entire tale might be embraced as imagination of the highest caliber.

Source: Joyce Duncan, Critical Essay on Seabiscuit: An American Legend, in Literary Newsmakers for Students, Thomson Gale, 2006.

In the following excerpt, Morris draws parallels between author Hillenbrand, a sufferer of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and the against-all-odds champion she chronicled.

The best-selling American sports book of the year 2001—and one of the year's bestsellers in any genre—is Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand. The success of the book is as unlikely as the success of Seabiscuit himself. How does a book about a half-century-dead racehorse become a publishing sensation? Sales of the book don't depend much on nostalgia, since most Americans are too young to have seen Seabiscuit race. Nor is Thoroughbred racing the cynosure of media attention that it was when Seabiscuit briefly dominated the sport in the 1930s. One can barely imagine selling such a book to a publisher in 2001, let alone to hundreds of thousands of readers.

But the Biscuit always beat the odds. Overmatched at ages two and three, Seabiscuit never entered a Triple Crown race. Yet he had great success at age four, and was Horse of the Year at five (in 1938). Even then, some of his most famous races were hard-fought losses. He had a knack for coming in second in the prestigious Santa Anita Handicap; he didn't win the race till his final outing in 1940. His story is one of continual comeback against adversity.

The author of Seabiscuit, Laura Hillenbrand, has also fought adversity. As one visitor to Hillenbrand's on-line guestbook at www.seabiscuitonline.com says, "YOU are the Seabiscuit of us invalids!" Afflicted with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Hillenbrand became America's most famous sufferer of the illness, especially after an interview on NPR's Diane Rehm Show in April 2001. Before April 2001, entries in her guestbook center on the inspirational qualities of the horse. After April, the entries follow two main threads—one about Seabiscuit, the other about the inspiring quality of Hillenbrand's life. The threads become entwined, even confused. While rooting for the horse to come back and win in the text, people root for the author to overcome disease in real life.

The author, lovely, frail, spirited, is embraced by hundreds of readers and nonreaders who imagine themselves the cure to her problems—perhaps none so invitingly as one "fellow CFSer" who signs himself "Tom Smith" and prescribes that Hillenbrand "curl up in the hay and get the rest you need."

Laura Hillenbrand hardly set out to invoke such readerly concern and affection. Yet the way her readers feel about her is analogous to the way she feels toward the horses and people she writes about. As her readers summon up images of the author curling up in her bedding, or think aloud about ministering to the hair behind her ears, they more or less consciously echo passages in Seabiscuit where Hillenbrand conveys an immediate, visceral sense of the sufferings of her heroes.

Time and again in the story, Seabiscuit and jockey Red Pollard achieve great things, only to be brought to earth again by the fragility of their bodies. In 1938, Pollard, immobilized by an injury, must watch George Woolf ride Seabiscuit in the match race against War Admiral: "He was sure he would be able to ride again. A glance at his emaciated body, jutting out a harsh angles from under the sheets, testified to the contrary." Later, in 1939, it is Seabiscuit who is incapacitated as another Santa Anita Handicap approaches:

The veterinarian took radiographs, which would take a while to develop. All they could do now was wait. The Howards spent their time sorting through myriad sympathy notes from fans, some of whom enclosed bottles of remedies for the horse.

You can't send bottles of Tahitian Noni Juice through cyberspace, but in most other respects the parallel between Seabiscuit laid up in 1939 and Hillenbrand laid up in 2001 is remarkable—not least because of the outpouring of public sympathy and love.

The love that the readers of Seabiscuit bear its author has precedents in literary history and sport history, if not perhaps in the genre of sport literature: one thinks of Willa Cather's devoted circle of reader-critics, of the loving crowds worldwide that attended Muhammad Ali, of the deep connection cancer survivors feel to Lance Armstrong. Such love suggests that one reason for the success of the book is the fluid relationship among author, text, heroes, and reader that allows Hillenbrand's audience to imagine their way into inspiring, validating, and romantic situations. "I was so taken by your story today, and would like to give you my services for free," says one reader; "I would like to illustrate, paint, draw, scribble, or attend to your yard work for you."

Such readers claim to center their experience of literature, and possibly of life, around Hillenbrand and Seabiscuit. Even allowing for the hyperbole of fan-letter discourse, these readers feel something special. One goes so far as to reverse the coat-tails of the book's spring publication, claiming that Hillenbrand has done more for the Triple Crown races than the Triple Crown has done for Seabiscuit: "With your emotion packed words I am sure you and you alone are responsible for the increase in interest re the Derby (up 40%) and the Preakness (up 56%)."

Just as significant in establishing a sense of the "horizon of expectations" that characterizes Seabiscuit's readership are remarks that connect Seabiscuit to other reading experiences. Jim Lewandowski says that Seabiscuit is "the best since I read "Undaunted Courage' by Stephen Ambrose," a prodigiously unironic bestseller from 1996. Andrew Abruzzese, a restaurateur, admits that "I have finished reading two books in my life. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and yours." By such central measures of canonicity as this—the sense that a book is the best, or even the only, exemplar of literary quality—Seabiscuit is poised to become canonical in a way so deep as to evade the notice of academic discourse.

Not all readers go as far as Sandy Mendez, who tells Hillenbrand that "I have requested your book accompany my burial." But among all the tears and sighs, real or virtual, that season readers' responses to Seabiscuit on-line, is the sense that this book has given them something irreplaceable: an inspiration, a reason to go on living, to follow a dream.

This might be the moment for a scholarly puncturing of illusions, for some demonstration of the false consciousness of Hillenbrand's farflung readership. But it may be better just to note a recurrent dynamic that drives interest in sport literature: the need for an unadulterated hero. This need—documented in founding studies in the academic field of sport literature like Michael Oriard's Dreaming of Heroes and Robert J. Higgs's Laurel & Thorn—continues to be felt in the 21st century. Possibly the only heroes left without feet of clay are those with shoes of iron.

In tracing the appeal of Seabiscuit to its construction of an unironic hero, and to the apparently unorchestrated coupling of authorial image with that of the hero, questions of literary value seem beside the point, as they so often become in academic criticism. But Seabiscuit is clearly more than an exploitation of an available niche in American cultural discourse. It's a nonfiction masterpiece. Such a straightforward statement seems ingenious. But without good writing, the other factors that align to produce the Seabiscuit phenomenon would not be enough. The very ingenuousness of such a bald assertion of critical value will trigger, for many academic readers, a hermeneutics of suspicion: what is wrong with this picture? Everyone is having far too good a time.

But occasionally, the books that are revered by "naïve" readers can also be those that stand critical scrutiny from the most jaded readers. Honestly, I couldn't put Seabiscuit down, either. While it is unlikely to make the Oprah Winfrey list (it is non-fiction, and its author will probably be unable to appear on the Oprah TV show, two strikes against it), Hillenbrand's book is akin to the tales of survival and redemption preferred by Winfrey and her staff. And just as there is literary merit aplenty on the Oprah list—in the work of Edwidge Danticat, Toni Morrison, and others—so there is exemplary imaginative writing in the work of Laura Hillenbrand. Even if one's preferred mode is irony, there's something to be said for the occasional splash of earnestness.

Source: Tim Morris, "Seabiscuit? Come On …," in Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature, Vol. 14, No. 1, Fall 2001, pp. 79-90.

In the following interview with Publishers Weekly, author Hillenbrand discusses the appeal of Seabiscuit and the people who helped the horse become a part of history.

PW: Your book Seabiscuit is about a legendary racehorse. What makes Seabiscuit's story so special?

LH: He's unique because of the time he was in. It was the Depression, and people were trying to find ways to escape, and this "rags to riches" horse answered their yearning for something like that. Seabiscuit was the single biggest news-maker of 1938, and that was a really momentous year. During that time, even people who didn't give a damn about horse racing were following him.

PW: Why had, no one yet written this book?

LH: In the 1930s, journalism was a lot less personal; journalists tended not to say very much about the people involved. But when I started looking into the life of Seabiscuit and the lives of those around him, I found fascinating people living a story that was improbable, breathtaking and ultimately more satisfying than any story I'd ever come across. I had to tell it.

PW: A lot of people haven't heard of Seabiscuit. Given that, was it difficult to sell the book?

LH: I originally sold a story to American Heritage magazine, and that started everything rolling. People started saying, "You really ought to make a book out of this."

PW: Seabiscuit is largely a story of three men (an owner, a trainer and a jockey) with distinctly different personalities and temperaments coming together to produce a winning racehorse. How did these disparate characters affect your research?

LH: One of the things I love is just how improbable it is that these three people would get together. It's just amazing. But they all got along really well. There were times when I found conflicting stories from other people and in the press. But one of the beautiful things about horse racing is that there are extremely thorough records about races. And there were witnesses. Most of them are in their 80s and 90s, but I got a lot of first-hand accounts and I found a lot of film and photographs that could settle disputes.

PW: The culture of horse racing was very different in the 1930s and '40s than it is today. Other than the Triple Crown, many races today have only an elite following, nothing like the mass audiences of the past. Will that decrease in popularity affect the book's readership?

LH: The racing audience certainly has shrunk. Back then, everyone in America followed Seabiscuit. But I've tried to write this book for a general audience and I think its biggest appeal is not the sports angle; it's the human angle. I think these people are absolutely fascinating—and would have been even if I didn't care about horse racing.

Source: Lynn Andriani, "PW Talks with Laura Hillenbrand," in Publisher's Weekly, Vol. 248, January 1, 2001, pp. 3-15.