From the colonial era to the beginning of the twentieth century, horse racing was by far the most popular sport in America. Great numbers of Americans and overseas visitors flocked to the nation’s tracks, and others avidly followed the sport in both general-interest newspapers and specialized periodicals. Thoroughbred Nation offers a detailed yet panoramic view of thoroughbred racing in the United States, following the sport from its origins in colonial Virginia and South Carolina to its boom in the Lower Mississippi Valley, and then from its post–Civil War rebirth in New York City and Saratoga Springs to its opulent mythologization of the “Old South” at Louisville’s Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby. Natalie A. Zacek introduces readers to an unforgettable cast of characters, from “plungers” such as Virginia plantation owner William Ransom Johnson (known as the “Napoleon of the Turf”) and Wall Street financier James R. Keene (who would wager a fortune on the outcome of a single competition) to the jockeys, trainers, and grooms, most of whom were African American. While their names are no longer known, their work was essential to the sport. Zacek also details the careers of remarkable, though scarcely remembered, horses, whose achievements made them as famous in their day as more recent equine celebrities such as Seabiscuit or Secretariat. Based upon exhaustive research in print and visual sources from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States, Thoroughbred Nation will be of interest both to those who love the sport of horse racing for its own sake and to those who are fascinated by how this pastime reflects and influences American identities.

Can she balance her ideals with the lure of her heart? Mignonne Wingate, a beauty in post-Civil War Alabama, intends never to love again. But then she meets the Edgefield brothers at a fashionable resort in Saratoga Springs, New York. Dashing, wild, Cooper Edgefield is hard to resist, yet also frightening. Kind, quiet Robert Edgefield appeals to her, but she worries that his duty to his ill father overshadows his interest in marriage. As Mignonne moves among the elite society of the railroad barons she witnesses a world far less genteel and far more aggressive than her Southern upbringing. This fifth novel in Jacquelyn Cook's classic historical romance series gracefully waltzes THE RIVER SERIES to a satisfying conclusion. Cook's highly researched historicals bring to life the antebellum South and its people, mixing fiction and fact. Jacquelyn Cook is the author of acclaimed historical novels and historical romances, with over 500,000 copies sold. Her classic, five-book River series authentically recreates the romance and drama of the Civil War era in historic Eufaula, Alabama. Formerly collected in a popular anthology titled Magnolias, the River Series is now offered to readers in these updated editions.