Books about Ruffian from Amazon.com

In the book, Barbaro, Smarty Jones and Ruffian: The People s Horses, author Linda Hanna brings readers up-close-and-personal to the sport of Thoroughbred horseracing. Through the lives of these three dynamic fan favorites, Hanna shares all aspects of the sport as well as many pieces of personal information on Barbaro, Smarty Jones and Ruffian gleaned from her intense research. Through exclusive interviews with owners, trainers, jockeys, equine veterinarians, pedigree specialists and racing officials, she carries fans to a new level of knowledge and appreciation. Speaking from the perspective of a fan, Hanna educates her audience in the nuances of breeding, training and racing. The reader will be readily drawn into the new Golden Age of Horseracing in the 70s, as Ruffian makes her dramatic debut at Belmont Park and smashes track records during this brief and brilliant career. Insights from her trainer, Frank Y. Whiteley, Jr., shed new light on her devastating and fatal breakdown during The Great Match Race of 1975. As Smarty Jones captivated America with his Triple Crown bid in 2004, Hanna weaves readers into the history of horseracing in his home state of Pennsylvania and the positive reverberations there caused by the Smarty Effect. All aspects of Smarty s brief yet incredible career are presented in great detail with new revelations concerning his much-criticized retirement in August 2004. In a glowing Introduction to the book written by Smarty s owner, Patricia L. Chapman, readers are reminded of all aspects of the sport-positive and negative. Both Chapman and Hanna speak to the need for greater rescue efforts for needy horses and to the call for greater responsibility for all within the sport. As a designated charity for a portion of the book s proceeds, Hanna directs her readers to The Kentucky Equine Humane Center in a Preface by Staci Hancock who outlines the Center s wonderful efforts in horse rescue and placement. Another large segment of the population was drawn to Thoroughbred horseracing, as it watched Gretchen and Roy Jackson s Barbaro struggle for survival after breaking a leg during the 2006 Preakness Stakes. With poignant detail, Hanna moves her audience through the interworkings of veterinary orthopedics at New Bolton Center, an eight-month public relations/media effort on national television and an on-going and astounding fan base for the fallen hero, Barbaro. Since his death in January 2007, Hanna relates that fans have united in new and far-reaching causes in his name. In a final section of the book, which Hanna titles Legacy, she examines significant and timely equine topics. Some of these include: the injuries of these horses, an analysis of their pedigrees, efforts toward anti-slaughter, the need for rescue efforts, the work of the Fans of Barbaro and the legacies of these three special equine athletes. As a final kudo to fans young and old, Governor Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania addresses the wonderful careers of Barbaro, Smarty Jones and Ruffian in what has evolved as a feel good story about these horses lives..
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On July 6, 1975, a 3-year-old filly named Ruffian was loaded into the starting gate at Belmont Park for a televised match race against Kentucky Derby winner colt Foolish Pleasure. Since winning her first race a little more than a year earlier, the unbeaten, unflappable Ruffian had literally raced her way into the hearts of a nation. One of those hearts belonged to Newsday turf reporter William Nack.

As a boy in Illinois, Nack had carried in his pocket a trading card of his hero, Swaps, the winner of the 1955 Kentucky Derby. As a young soldier in Vietnam, Nack tuned out the midnight bomb blasts by listening to racetrack broadcasts from Santa Anita. Now, fresh off the publication of his astonishing biography of Secretariat -- described by Seabiscuit author Laura Hillenbrand as "the gold standard of horse books" -- he found himself smitten once again.

But tragedy struck that summer's day at Belmont Park. After charging from the gate, Ruffian stumbled and shattered her right foreleg. She had to be put down. Nack's heartbreaking run with thoroughbred racing's most famous filly will soon be immortalized in a made-for-TV movie to be broadcast on ESPN and ABC. In this moving, lyrical memoir, he relives the afternoon that forever changed his love affair with the track..
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During two short seasons at the track, Ruffian was hailed as the greatest thoroughbred filly of all time. Unbeaten in her first ten starts, she shattered one record after another, dazzling crowds with both her beauty and her brilliant speed. Then tragedy struck on the afternoon of July 6, 1975. Ruffian broke down–on the lead–in the middle of a match race at Belmont Park. Later that night she had to be destroyed.

Ruffian: Burning from the Start is the story of this exceptional filly, a horse so dominating, so powerful, that writer Walter Farley once suggested she was more like the fictional legend, the Black Stallion, than any colt he had ever seen. Beginning with her earliest days in Kentucky, the book follows Ruffian at every stage of her career and through the agony of her final hours– venturing behind the scenes of the racing world and exploring the politics and personalities that came together to shape this extraordinary filly’s fate..
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"Thoroughbred racing has never gotten over Ruffian Lyn Lifshin came out of nowhere to become a Ruffian fan, a zealot for everything Ruffian stood for and all that she touched Her poems will carry you away to a field of Kentucky foals, to the racetrack where each new horse could be the one, to the bone-numbing feeling of a runaway winner and to the despair of watching brilliance flame out. Ruffian would have liked Lifshin."-Sean Clancy, author of Saratoga Days

"Eros and Equus perfectly combine in these sleek, sensual poems. From brilliant filly to tragic fatality, Lifshin keeps pace with this dark darling of the track, everybody's favorite-Ruffian."-Laura Chester

"These poems do the memory and legacy of Ruffian The Beauty justice at last. Poetry is the only medium to evoke the life and tragic death of this extraordinary horse, and Lyn Lifshin proves more than up to the task. They mirror the evolution of Ruffian's athletic prowess and striking black beauty with deft attentiveness and poignant detail. They do not merely honor the memory of Ruffian, but invoke the dynamic ghost of her radiant presence . . ."-Joe La Rosa.
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Ruffian's tragic story still has a powerful hold over horse racing enthusiasts The big, almost-black filly so dominated her peers that none could get near her on the racetrack Then came the fateful match against Kentucky Derby winner Foolish Pleasure--the race in which she lost her life..
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Violence and democracy may seem fundamentally incompatible, but the two have often been intimately and inextricably linked. In Ruffians, Yakuza, Nationalists, Eiko Maruko Siniawer argues that violence has been embedded in the practice of modern Japanese politics from the very inception of the country's experiment with democracy. As soon as the parliament opened its doors in 1890, brawls, fistfights, vandalism, threats, and intimidation quickly became a fixture in Japanese politics, from campaigns and elections to legislative debates. Most of this physical force was wielded by what Siniawer calls "violence specialists": ruffians and yakuza. Their systemic and enduring political violence-in the streets, in the halls of parliament, during popular protests, and amid labor strife-ultimately compromised party politics in Japan and contributed to the rise of militarism in the 1930s.

For the post-World War II years, Siniawer illustrates how the Japanese developed a preference for money over violence as a political tool of choice. This change in tactics signaled a political shift, but not necessarily an evolution, as corruption and bribery were in some ways more insidious, exclusionary, and undemocratic than violence.

Siniawer demonstrates that the practice of politics in Japan has been dangerous, chaotic, and far more violent than previously thought. Additionally, crime has been more political. Throughout the book, Siniawer makes clear that certain yakuza groups were ideological in nature, contrary to the common understanding of organized crime as nonideological. Ruffians, Yakuza, Nationalists is essential reading for anyone wanting to comprehend the role of violence in the formation of modern nation-states and its place in both democratic and fascist movements..
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