The Treasury of Horses

by Walter D. Osborne and Patricia H. Johnson

One of those older coffee-table style books I picked up at a library discard sale years ago. It's an overview of the horse- the origins of many different breeds, how they were developed and used through history. The presence of horses in mythology and art, their historic uses in warfare, agriculture, betting sports and now mostly as a leisure occupation. Some of it is dry reading- I started to loose attention when names of famous equines and horsemen paraded across the page. But the descriptions of how different breeds were developed and why, details on the evolution of hunting sports, explanations on how horse shows are run, harness racing and lots of other stuff was interesting just because I know so little about it. I didn't know, for example, how different from other horses is the physiology of the Arabian.  Anyone really into horses probably already knows more than this book offers- it's from the sixties after all. Still the pictures are good in spite of showing their age, and I learned more than I expected to.

Rating: 3/5          251 pages, 1966