…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.
The New York Times Book Review - C. E. Morgan
"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."
"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."
"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."
Wall Street Journal - Gregory Curtis
"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."
New York Review of Books - Verlyn Klinkenborg
"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."
★ 2017-11-13
