Out of the Clouds: The Unlikely Horseman and the Unwanted Colt Who Conquered the Sport of Kings

In the bestselling tradition of Seabiscuit and The Eighty-Dollar Champion, THE PEOPLE'S HORSE tells the rags-to-riches saga of Stymie and the unlikely horseman who bought the unwanted colt on the cheap and transformed him into racing's ultimate Cinderella champion and top career money winner, creating a beloved folk hero that inspired a postwar nation in pursuit of the American Dream.

In the wake of World War II, as turmoil and chaos were giving way to a spirit of optimism, Americans were looking for inspiration and role models showing that it was possible to start from the bottom and work your way up to the top-and they found it in Stymie, the failed racehorse plucked from the discard heap by trainer Hirsch Jacobs. Like Stymie, Jacobs was a commoner in "The Sport of Kings," a dirt-poor Brooklyn city slicker who forged an unlikely career as racing's winningest trainer by buying cheap, unsound nags and magically transforming them into winners. The $1,500 pittance Jacobs paid to claim Stymie became history's biggest bargain as the ultimate iron horse went on to run a whopping 131 races and win 25 stakes, becoming the first Thoroughbred ever to earn more than $900,000. The Cinderella champion nicknamed "The People's Horse" captivated the masses with his rousing charge-from-behind stretch runs, his gritty blue-collar work ethic, and his rags-to-riches success story. In a golden age when horse racing rivaled baseball and boxing as America's most popular pastime, he was every bit as inspiring a sports hero as Joe DiMaggio and Joe Louis.

Taking readers on a crowd-pleasing ride with Stymie and Jacobs, The People's Horse unwinds a real-life Horatio Alger tale of a dauntless team and its working-class fans who lived vicariously through the stouthearted little colt they embraced as their own.