The primary reason this story of a race horse, his owner, jockey, and especially, his trainer, became a best seller is Hillenbrand’s ability to create drama and especially suspense. She writes well enough that for everyone of Seabiscuit’s horse races I felt like gripping the rail and screaming my head off as he came around the backstretch. I was wracked by despair each time Seabiscuit inflamed a tendon. I learned more about thoroughbred racing than I knew there was to learn and can hardly wait for an opportunity to get to a track. Additionally, the book is interesting because the horse was the most famous person in the U.S. in 1939, moreso than Roosevelt, Hitler, or Mussolini, and I’d never heard of him. It reminded me of A Civil Action, by Jonathan Harr in the way the book read like a suspense novel, rather than a dry nonfiction piece about horses. June 2006.