…brilliant…[Raulff] uses a flair for web-thinking to connect seemingly disparate facts into fresh epiphanies on subjects that we might otherwise find overly familiar…Raulff constructs not just painterly layers of complementary information but wreaths of interconnected facts. In short order, he is capable of braiding together Degas, the thoroughbred, Cromwell, Francis Galton (Darwin's cousin), George Stubbs, anatomical theaters and Muybridge, all before securing the wreath to itself with Degas again. Every few pages, he works this magic. Along these circuitous routes, his prose takes air, floating on the sheer joy of investigation and rumination…As a savvy historian, Raulff refuses to capitulate to simplistic chronological organization and instead relays events without forcing them into artificial sequence. His approach feels unusual on the page, but deeply familiar, even natural, because it mimics the discursive gymnastics of the mind…The result of this technique is that Raulff's text is somehow dreamy but not sentimental; labyrinthine but not frustrating. Interestingly, it produces a portrait of pathos without being overtly elegiac…It's a powerful display of one writer's willingness to train his mind with unusual care on our coexistence with an animal that has unduly borne both our "physical and metaphorical burdens." Our world needs more writers willing to do work of this kind…fastening together rich new connections before they are lost forever. Bravo to those unwilling to let history…slip away unnoticed. Bravo to Ulrich Raulff.
Farewell to the Horse: A Cultural History
Narrated by Matthew Waterson
Ulrich RaulffUnabridged — 13 hours, 41 minutes
Farewell to the Horse: A Cultural History
Narrated by Matthew Waterson
Ulrich RaulffUnabridged — 13 hours, 41 minutes
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Overview
Horses and humans share an ancient, profoundly complex relationship. Once our most indispensable companions, horses were for millennia essential in helping build our cities, farms, and industries. But during the twentieth century, in an increasingly mechanized society, they began to disappear from human history. In this esoteric and rich tribute, award-winning historian Ulrich Raulff chronicles the dramatic story of this most spectacular creature, thoroughly examining how they've been muses and brothers in arms, neglected and sacrificed in war yet memorialized in paintings, sculpture, and novels—and ultimately marginalized on racetracks and in pony clubs. Elegiac and absorbing, Farewell to the Horse paints a stunning panorama of a world shaped by hooves, and the imprint left on humankind.
Editorial Reviews
"For anybody who loves horses Ulrich Raulff’s book is an extraordinary and far-reaching examination of the horse in our art, culture and imagination, as well as its pivotal role in war, commerce and peace over so many centuries."
"Strange and fascinating. . . . A sweeping cultural history, more kaleidoscopic than totale, as bibliographical as it is historical. . . . Farewell to the Horse is a whirlwind that seems capable of drawing into its vortex almost anyone who ever thought of a horse."
"Reading Farewell to the Horse gives the same feeling of elation and abandon that comes when you are lucky enough to ride a horse at a gallop across open land. . . . You never know what might be on the next page or even in the next sentence. . . . Dazzling."
"A beautiful and thoughtful exploration. . . . It is shocking how recently we relied upon horses, and as this tale is told, shocking how fast we have moved away from our dependent working relationship with them. This fine history book tells the story of that relationship in its final century, and how horses still run through our culture in countless ways, distant echoes of the pact we long had with them."
"Exceptionally thorough. . . . Raulff offers a look at a changing cultural landscape, primarily in western Europe, with the horse as one of the primary casualties of industry."
"In Farewell to the Horse, Ulrich Raulff has composed nothing less than a requiem Mass for this long-suffering, noble creature — a complex and lyrical argument that places the horse in a central role in the creation of the modern world. In his excavations of the 150-year period that makes up this long farewell, the author discovered something marvelous: ‘Horses had more meanings than bones.’. . . Raulff has given us an eloquent epitaph for the horse’s long relevance to our world."
"Get ready for a wild ride! Operatic in scope, quirky in detail, Ulrich Raulff's magnificent book will sweep you off your feet, and carry you through centuries of art and literature, warfare and industry, all to the sound of the hoofbeats that made so much of human history possible. This is an important, passionate, surprising book. It shows just how much of our ‘progress’ is owed to another species—a species we both revered and cruelly enslaved. Students of history, lovers of horses, and those of us who recognize the crucial role of animals in human history will give this volume a prominent place on the bookshelf, and gratefully consult it again and again."
"As you pick up the reins of this book—trying to get a sense of what sort of a ride it is to be—it becomes evident within three paragraphs that you have never read a book like it. . . . [Raulff] has an extraordinarily connective mind and it is seldom possible to predict where he is going with it. . . . Beautifully and idiosyncratically illustrated."
★ 2017-11-13
A fascinating canter through the history of horses and their dealings, for better or worse, with humans.Horses have served humans for centuries. Still, writes Raulff, director of the German Literature Archive, we have arrived at the end of the "Age of Equus." "To be born in the countryside in the mid-twentieth century meant growing up in an old world," he writes at the outset of his sweeping cultural history, one in which horses did work drawing plows and wagons; even at that time, the horse was at the end of its useful life, the victim of a long decline in the age of mechanization that corresponded to the "long 19th century." The "Centaurian Pact" that Raulff celebrates still exists, though horses are now mostly used for recreation, but under very different terms from those of the past. In his long, circumstantial discussion of horses in warfare, for instance, he observes that in World War I, between 8 million and 9 million horses were killed, about as many as humans. The book has an almanaclike feel to it, darting from sketch to interesting tidbit to extended narrative. Though it sometimes approaches an everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about manual, in all its oddments—e.g., Theodore Roosevelt risked a lawsuit from Buffalo Bill Cody for coining the term "Rough Riders," the invention of the stirrup stirred demand for heavier armor and bigger horses, spurring evolution of armaments and animals alike, and so forth—there is a thoroughly impressive literary endeavor at play. Indeed, some of the best moments of this excellent book concern literary and artistic responses to horses, from the "savagely beaten or tormented horse" as a literary trope (Nietzsche, Kraus, Schopenhauer) to Slim Pickens' riding "the hobby horse of the nuclear age" at the close of Stanley Kubrick's film Dr. Strangelove.A top-notch addition to the library of any cultured equestrian; highly readable from start to finish.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940170232567 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HighBridge Company |
| Publication date: | 02/13/2018 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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