The Great Sweepstakes Of 1877

In 1877 the members of the United States Senate postponed all business for the day so that they might attend a horse race—the iconic, polarizing post-Civil War event at the center of this story. The nation, still recovering from the depredations of the Civil War and the Reconstruction that followed, recognized it as a North vs. South encounter, pitting New York’s powerful thoroughbred Tom Ochiltree and New Jersey’s Parole—owned by the ostentatious Northern tycoons Pierre and George Lorrilard—against the already legendary “Kentucky crack,” Ten Broeck—owned by the teetotaling, plain-living Frank Harper and ridden by black jockey and former slave William Walker—representing a former slave state and its Southern values. The race and the colorful cast of characters involved reflected the still seething America during one of the nation’s most difficult and divisive periods. Shrager presents a fascinating and heart-pounding piece of history exposing the racial and economic tensions following the Civil War that culminated in one final race to the end.

In 1877 the members of the United States Senate postponed all business for the day so that they might attend a horse race--the iconic, polarizing post-Civil War event at the center of this story. The nation, still recovering from the depredations of the Civil War and the Reconstruction that followed, recognized it as a North vs. South encounter, pitting New York's powerful thoroughbred Tom Ochiltree and New Jersey's Parole--owned by the ostentatious Northern tycoons Pierre and George Lorrilard--against the already legendary "Kentucky crack," Ten Broeck--owned by the teetotaling, plain-living Frank Harper and ridden by black jockey and former slave William Walker--representing a former slave state and its Southern values. The race and the colorful cast of characters involved reflected the still seething America during one of the nation's most difficult and divisive periods. Shrager presents a fascinating and heart-pounding piece of history exposing the racial and economic tensions following the Civil War that culminated in one final race to the end.

Today’s Kentucky Derby is a multimillion-dollar spectacle involving corporate sponsorship, worldwide media coverage, and an annual citywide festival in Louisville. Over its nearly century-and-a-half history, the Kentucky Derby has grown to be one of the biggest sporting events of the year, attracting 150,000 spectators at the track and nearly 15 million television viewers on the first Saturday each May. But 1875, the year of the first Derby, was a different time. The Louisville Jockey Club track, which would one day bear the name “Churchill Downs,” was a small structure that might, on its best day, provide seating and standing room for 12,000 spectators. The grandstand was plain and functional and included a section reserved for bookmakers, whose trade was legal and who operated in the open. Perhaps most significantly, the majority of jockeys in the race were Black, in stark contrast to the present-day Derby, where participation by African-American jockeys is rare. In The First Kentucky Derby, racing historian Mark Shrager examines the events leading up to the first “Run for the Roses,” the unsuccessful effort that the winning owner might have made to rig the race for his preferred horse, and the prominent role played by African Americans in Gilded Age racing culture—a holdover from pre-emancipation days, when slaves were trained from birth to ride for their wealthy owners and grew up surrounded by the horses that would be their life’s work.

"To understand the Kentucky Derby is to understand the contemporary American spirit." One hundred and fifty years have passed since the Thoroughbreds of the inaugural Kentucky Derby sprang from the starting gate to race beneath the iconic Twin Spires of Churchill Downs. But the story of the greatest two minutes in sports is more than the pageantry of the horses and thrill of the people who love and celebrate the event. Through the decades, the Derby, like the state that founded it, has experienced profound moments of social, economic, and cultural change. As one of Kentucky's flagship cultural and economic institutions, the Thoroughbred racing industry must constantly reconcile with its past and think critically about the stories that have traditionally made it into the winner's circle. In the right hands, artifacts of material culture related to the Derby have the power to inspire nuanced stories of the past and shed light on marginalized voices in the industry's history. In The History of the Kentucky Derby in 75 Objects, Jessica K. Whitehead sets out to recover the accurate history of America's longest continuously held sporting event and establish a balance between well-known narratives and those that are less widely shared. Whitehead, curator of collections at the Kentucky Derby Museum, gives readers a personal tour of 75 objects from the museum. Her selections place Black, Latin American, and female riders, owners, and trainers closer to the center of the Derby story, spotlighting the contributions and achievements of groups that have played an increasingly important role in shaping the legacy of the Run for the Roses.

The best resource available for finding a literary agent! No matter what you're writing--fiction or nonfiction, books for adults or children--you need a literary agent to get the best book deal possible from a traditional publisher. Guide to Literary Agents 2017 is your essential resource for finding that literary agent and getting a contract with one of the country's top publishers. Along with listing information for more than 1,000 agents who represent writers and their books, this updated edition of GLA includes: • A one-year subscription to the literary agent content on WritersMarket.com. • The secrets of query-writing success: Learn 5 common mistakes that make an agent stop reading--and how to avoid them. • "New Agent Spotlights": Get targeted profiles of literary reps who are actively building their client lists right now. • Informative articles on writing a synopsis, pitching your work online, defining your genre, utilizing writing peers to better your craft, and much more. Includes exclusive access to the webinar "10 Steps to Landing a Literary Agent" by Marisa Corvisiero of Corvisiero Literary Agency.

On October 20, 1923, at New York's Belmont Park, Kentucky Derby champion Zev toed the starting line alongside Papyrus, winner of England's greatest horse race, the Epsom Derby. The $100,000 purse for the novel intercontinental showdown was the largest in the history of America's oldest sport and writers across the country were calling it the "Race of the Century." A victory for the American colt in this blockbuster event would change how the nation viewed horse racing forever. In this book, James C. Nicholson exposes the central role of politics, money, and ballyhoo in the Jazz Age resurgence of the sport of kings. Though the Zev-Papyrus face-off was one of the most hyped sporting events of the early twentieth century, Nicholson reveals that it soon faded from American popular memory when it became known that Zev's owner, oil tycoon Harry F. Sinclair, was involved in an infamous scandal to defraud the United States of millions of barrels of publicly owned oil. As a result, Zev became an apt mascot for a nation struggling to reconcile its traditional values with the modern complexities of the Roaring Twenties, and his tainted legacy ultimately proved to be incompatible with tenets of national mythology that celebrate America as a place where hard work and fair play lead to prosperity.