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Stud: Adventures in Breeding | 
 enlarge | Author: Kevin Conley
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy Used: $0.11
You Save: $14.84 (99%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  26 reviews
Sales Rank: 443664
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.6
ISBN: 1582343322
Dewey Decimal Number: 636.13220973
EAN: 9781582343327
ASIN: 1582343322
Publication Date: April 2, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: With pride from Motor City. All books guaranteed. Best Service, best prices.
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Product Description
Sex. Money. Horses. Every year, on Valentine's Day, the great Thoroughbred farms open their breeding sheds and begin their primary business. For the next one hundred and fifty days, the cries of stallions and the vigorous encouragement of their handlers echo through breeding country, from the gentle hills of Kentucky to the rich valleys of California. Stud takes us into this strange and seductive world of horse breeding. We meet the world's leading sire, Storm Cat, the Triple Crown winner, Seattle Slew, and a nearly unmanageable colt, Devil Begone, who has found peace and prosperity on the banks of the Rio Grande servicing desert mares like Patty O'Furniture. Cheap stud, top stud, old stud, wild stud, from the Hall of Fame horse to the harem stallion with his feral herd, Stud looks at intimate acts in idyllic settings and the billion-dollar business behind them.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 21 more reviews...
 Not bad. Not great, but not bad. March 25, 2008
Kevin Conley, $tud: Adventures in Breeding (Bloomsbury, 2002)
"The most expensive thirty seconds in sports," the single line on the back of the book tells us, pointedly printed over the hindquarters part of a full-jacket photograph of Storm Cat, the most expensive American sire in history. New Yorker writer Kevin Conley takes us on a tour through the wild, weird world of horse breeding (mostly Thoroughbred, but a chapter is devoted to Standardbreds as well), and we get to meet a lot of very interesting people along the way, as well as the horses themselves. For wildness and weirdness, it can't be beat, as far as horse books I've read go; for writing, it's a bit different. I rush to say I may be affected by my recent reading here. I just finished up Bill Barich's most recent treatise on the racing world, and pretty much any racing writer would be hard-pressed to fill Barich's estimable writing slippers; everything else reads like Edward D. Wood, Jr., compared to Evelyn Waugh. Still, if you're interested in what goes on behind the camera (as it were) in the racing world, you could do a lot worse than to check out Conley's book. ***
 Interesting, fun read but factually flawed January 1, 2008
"Stud, adventures in breeding" is a well-written book that focuses as much or more on the human stories within the Thoroughbred breeding industry as on the equine aspect. One of the things that makes horse racing interesting is that every horse has a great human story behind it and the author skillfully impliments this fact. While the book is a good source of general, "inside information" and entertaining stories, it is certainly not an entirely accurate reference. Factual errors are common, distressing considering that the author is an editor of the New Yorker and contributes to a number of large publications. Smallish errors are more common, for example, the listing of Secretariat's syndication value as 5 million dollars rather than the actual figure of slightly over 8 million dollars. The bigger errors are more glaring. The most obvious to me is the report of the death during foaling of a prominent Standardbred broodmare. During my tenure as a farm veterinarian at Hanover, Daisy Harbor continued to produce healthy foals - something that would have been difficult for her to do post-mortem.
All in all, I recommend this book as a light-hearted look at what happens when the top racehorse de jour retires "to the breeding shed." There is more to it than girls, grass and money.
Funny,Interesting way to introduce horse racing/breeding May 1, 2007
I don't know much about horses,I live in a place where owning one means you have the space,money, and can accomodate them to the colder climate. Needless to say, I went into this book knowing very little about them let alone what it takes to make a champion racehorse.
However, by the time I got done reading this book I was able to inform other people on horses in general and breeding them. I enjoyed reading it, Conley makes the whole business entertaining and practical for anyone to understand. I couldn't put the book down, everyday when I was finished with what had to be done life-wise I read this book. Despite this factor there are a few things in the book that one had to either know offhand or research. This is the only reason why it didn't get five stars from me.
 Fun and Educational April 24, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
STUD is both fun and a nice overview of the horse racing and breeding industry. One of those rare books you tend to share witty quotes from with your friends.
The writer does an excellent job of telling us about the industry, horses and people - while rarely, if ever, boring us with the "I'm special 'cause I was there and you weren't" flavor common to many horse racing industry books.
A rare find, I was sorry to reach the end.
A great book! December 8, 2003
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book, in addition to being well written and interesting, covers the oft-overlooked foundation of the racing industry. I loved the portrayls of the horses and the owners!
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