It is very sad, but not entirely surprising that Barbaro’s life was brought to an end this week after an 8-month struggle following his disastrous injury out of the starting gate at the Preakness.

Eclipse Press, part of Blood-Horse Publications of Lexington, KY, was all set optimistically to publish Barbaro: The Horse Who Captured America’s Heart, by Sean Clancy, a hardcover, in landscape format, with 100 color photos. Review copies of the April publication were recently delivered — and then Barbaro’s life ended. Eclipse will issue the book, still as close to the original  pub date as possible, with a revised final chapter.

Of course Barbaro was the exception in thoroughbred horseracing, and another book, also due in April, will remind readers what most of the sport is like. Not By A Long Shot: A Season at a Hard Luck Horse Track, by veteran racing reporter T.D. Thornton (PublicAffairs) shows readers the more prevalent conditions that exist around this “sport of kings,” with aging horses competing on aging tracks, where young jockeys hope to beat the odds and make it into the big time, where a lot of local men and women — from rural to Runyonesque, and not with the coffers of kings — enjoy the spectacle and are the main support of a multi-billion-dollar betting industry.

Many of us have been to a local racetrack, where ”racing lives [are] lived below the radar,” as the Not By A Long Shot galley sheet puts it. I once bet on a 9-year-old mare named Fast Emily in a race at the Great Barrington, MA fairgrounds. We didn’t win. Thornton reminds us that even the best of the horses lose 75% of the time.

Readers may enjoy a celebratory book about Barbaro, with his 6 races, and the millions earned and spent trying to save him (a rescue motivated at least in part so that millions in stud fees could have been earned — thoroughbreds are only allowed to reproduce by “live cover” ). But Thornton’s book will make sure that they understand Barbaro in context.  

Look for reviews in forthcoming issues of LJ.