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One of The Economist's Best Books of the Year
An Amazon Best Book of the Month
A Next Big Idea Club Must-Read Book
From New York Times bestselling author of The Mosquito, the incredible story of how the horse shaped human history
Timothy C. Winegard’s The Horse is an epic history unlike any other. Its story begins more than 5,500 years ago on the windswept grasslands of the Eurasian Steppe; when one human tamed one horse, an unbreakable bond was forged and the future of humanity was instantly rewritten, placing the reins of destiny firmly in human hands.
Since that pivotal day, the horse has carried the history of civilizations on its powerful back. For millennia it was the primary mode of transportation, an essential farming machine, a steadfast companion, and a formidable weapon of war. Possessing a unique combination of size, speed, strength, and stamina, the horse dominated every facet of human life and shaped the very scope of human ambition. And we still live among its galloping shadows.
Horses revolutionized the way we hunted, traded, traveled, farmed, fought, worshipped, and interacted. They fundamentally reshaped the human genome and the world’s linguistic map. They determined international borders, molded cultures, fueled economies, and built global superpowers. They decided the destinies of conquerors and empires. And they were vectors of lethal disease and contributed to lifesaving medical innovations. Horses even inspired architecture, invention, furniture, and fashion. From the thundering cavalry charges of Alexander the Great to the streets of New York during the Great Manure Crisis of 1894 and beyond, horses have shaped both the grand arc of history and our everyday lives.
Driven by fascinating revelations and fast-paced storytelling, The Horse is a riveting narrative of this noble animal’s unrivaled and enduring reign across human history. To know the horse is to understand the world.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
July 30, 2024 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780593186091
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780593186091
- File size: 56228 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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February 1, 2024
The best-selling author of The Mosquito offers a history of human development as seen through the domestication of the horse, whose power and speed changed the course of global human history. Winegard explores this relationship across agriculture, trade networks, military actions, colonialism, and more. Prepub Alert.
Copyright 2023 Library Journal
Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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June 1, 2024
Everything you ever wanted to know about the genus Equus. Until the rise of the automobile, humans were dependent on horses for transportation, "so paramount and pivotal to human society that we base our units of mechanical energy or engine output on horsepower." Winegard, author of The Mosquito, takes a long view of the horse's fortunes, suggesting that had it not been for human intervention, horses might well have gone extinct, with many former species now reduced to the common horse, Equus caballus, along with a small population of Przewalski's horse, Equus ferus przewalskii. (For fans of genetics, one distinction is that the latter has 66 chromosomes against the former's 64.) The author takes a kitchen-sink approach to his subject, with sometimes not quite digested and repetitive stocks of data and detail piled up on his pages. Even so, he turns in some good stories, such as the unfortunate choice of the Persian ruler Cyrus the Great to tangle with the Scythian horse masters of the Eurasian steppe, who likely turned his skull into a drinking bowl for his trouble. Another intriguing element is Winegard's account of how the horse returned to the Americas, where it had first evolved but, after crossing over the Bering land bridge into Asia, disappeared. Brought by the Spanish, the horse occasioned the rise of wide-ranging Indigenous warrior cultures on both continents. Perhaps most meaningful to the sensitive horse lover will be the author's look at the use of horses in World Wars I and II, with appalling losses that far surpassed those of humans: 8 million of 16 million horses in the Great War died, "the bloodiest conflict for horses in the history of warfare." Sometimes weighed down by too-abundant detail, but a thorough, comprehensive look at the horse across time and space.COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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July 1, 2024
Winegard, who teaches history at Colorado Mesa University, delivers a panoramic account of the horse, from its origins some 57 million years ago to its eventual pairing with humans to forge "the most dominant animal coalition ever witnessed."" Along the way, readers are ever reminded of the horse's importance in human history--from the consumption of its meat as a critical source of protein to its adoption as a weapon of war and its place in such consequential military campaigns as those of Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan, its place in the advancement of agrarian practices, its unfortunate role as a vector of such devastating human diseases as typhoid and influenza, and its very centrality in the shaping of the United States. Winegard gives ample time and space to laying out the historical contexts in which the horse was a central actor, all such contexts making for a book whose revelations about the once all-powerful human-horse dyad will continue to surprise.COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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