The NASCAR of the Age of Ragtime

It's hard to fathom the America that Charles Leerhsen recaptures in "Crazy Good," his wire-to-wire biography of Dan Patch, one of the early 20th century's most celebrated athletes— who also happened to be a horse. Today's racehorses don't command the same spotlight unless they have tragic injuries, like Eight Belles at the Kentucky Derby in May, or Triple Crown chances, like Big Brown at next week's Belmont Stakes. But before World War I, horse racing was the nation's leading sport, and harness racing, in which the horse pulls a rider on a light cart, was more popular than the Thoroughbred game. Because most people still traveled by horse-drawn carriage, it was like the NASCAR of the ragtime era: a chance to cheer on a faster version of something you have at home. Dan Patch in his prime—he raced from 1900 to 1909—was the fastest, most electrifying form of transportation available. More than 100,000 people would flock to watch his exhibitions of blinding speed, where he frequently pierced the two-minute-mile mark, and eventually shaved the record to 1:55. He earned close to $1 million a year at a time when baseball's great Ty Cobb was making just $12,000, and his fame floated a bonanza of Dan Patch merchandise, including pancake syrup, washing machines and cigars. "In this one animal, humbly bred and congenitally malformed, had come together all the virtues the horse-drawn world had ever imagined," writes Leerhsen.

One of the many satisfactions of "Crazy Good" is that it goes farther than "Seabiscuit"—Laura Hillenbrand's popular resurrection of another unlikely superstar—in explaining how a horse could be so feted, then forgotten. By the time of his death in 1916, the horse-and-buggy world had been upended, and Dan Patch's departure didn't resonate with a society where the automobile reigned. With wit and a winking charm, Leerhsen, an executive editor at Sports Illustrated, makes sure this handsome brown stallion resonates in ours. He overcomes the obstacle of a main character who never spoke a word by stuffing his story with the outsize personalities of trainers, owners and local legend-keepers, and the details of an era when "fast food meant oysters." From start to finish, this book has legs.