Maureen's Reviews > The Horse: A Galloping History of Humanity

very much enjoyed this book and the gathering of two of my most favourite subjects: history and horses. Amazing amount of facts; yes a little academic to be considered light reading. Bonus, Winegard is a fellow Ontarian Canadian so that made the reading more interesting as he offered statistics for Toronto that are often not included in history books.
Equines possess the rare combination of size, speed, strength and stamina so they became very useful as a weapon of war, a prime economic mover and an agricultural powerhouse (p459). Amazingly as Winegard shares the amount of money spent on providing birth control and euthanasia for wild horses in the U.S. and Canada but then also shares the annual economic impact of the estimated 7.25 million horses in the U.S. of $122 billion supporting 1.74 million full-time jobs (breeding, showing, racing, competition, farming ranching, police, military, therapy, Olympics, Indigenous and Amish communities). Great photographs throughout also.
He finished with a brief notation about the wild horses of Sable Island. I wish he had included something about the unique Icelandic horses with their extra gait, as I spent an hour and a half riding one of those this summer.
Favourite lines: The combination of size and speed as evolved by horses, is a rarity in the animal kingdom (p43) "There is a direct correlation between horseback riding and the origin and widespread adoption of pants...prior to the horse-fabricated stitching of pants, people wore gowns, robes, skirts, togas, tunics, leggings, and kilts" (p117) "mentally substitute horses for every aspect of our current motorized and mechanical farming, manufacturing, transport, distribution, services, war, and trade" (p375) "The motorized solutions that saved us from horse pollution in the twentieth century are now imperiling us with their own pollution in the twenty-first century" (p393)