This informative book shows how the influence of Kentucky Standard breeding spread across the nation and finally around the world. Here is the story of the horses and farms, the men and women who made it possible. Rich with anecdote and founded on a unique store of learning, it will delight both the newcomer to the sport and the lifelong devotee.

While gender equality has progressed in many sports since the second wave of the feminist movement in terms of women’s inclusion, participation, and success, harness horse racing has been recalcitrant to change. Gender, Work, and Harness Racing: Fast Horses and Strong Women in Southwestern Pennsylvania investigates the stories of women involved in harness racing to expose how they use the uniqueness of their situation to work for positive change. With stirring accounts of the strong women who are surviving, and sometimes succeeding, in harness horse racing, Elizabeth Anne Larsen’s analysis provides insight for studies of gender and work, occupational sex segregation, and women’s studies.

Belle Brezing made a major career move when she stepped off the streets of Lexington, Kentucky, and into Jennie Hill's bawdy house -- an upscale brothel run out of a former residence of Mary Todd Lincoln. At nineteen, Brezing was already infamous as a youth steeped in death, sex, drugs, and scandal. But it was in Miss Hill's "respectable" establishment that she began to acquire the skills, manners, and business contacts that allowed her to ascend to power and influence as an internationally known madam. In this revealing book, Maryjean Wall offers a tantalizing true story of vice and power in the Gilded Age South, as told through the life and times of the notorious Miss Belle. After years on the streets and working for Hill, Belle Brezing borrowed enough money to set up her own establishment -- her wealth and fame growing alongside the booming popularity of horse racing. Soon, her houses were known internationally, and powerful patrons from the industrial cities of the Northeast courted her in the lavish parlors of her gilt-and-mirror mansion. Secrecy was a moral code in the sequestered demimonde of prostitution in Victorian America, so little has been written about the Southern madam credited with inspiring the character Belle Watling in Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind. Following Brezing from her birth amid the ruins of the Civil War to the height of her scarlet fame and beyond, Wall uses her story to explore a wider world of sex, business, politics, and power. The result is a scintillating tale that is as enthralling as any fiction.

HARNESS RACING IN THE KEYSTONE STATE is a combination of a history, reference and coffee table book, comprised of a photo gallery and racing tidbits. Within the binding are two books. BOOK ONE is the history of racing horses, starting with chariot racing in 753 BC to the present day harness racing, with an overview of harness racing’s greatest progenitors: Messenger, Abdullah and Hambletonian. Also covered is the origin of Pennsylvania Fair Racing, commencing in the 1800’s through present day. The premier racetracks Liberty Bell Park, Hollywood Casino at the Meadows, The Downs at Mohegan Sun Pocono and Harrah’s Philadelphia Casino & Racetrack are also highlighted. BOOK TWO is more contemporary showcasing management, trainers, drivers, “people behind the scenes,” game changers, prominent owners and generations of harness racing families. This book is for everyone who loves horses and horse racing and is bound to be a keepsake that can be passed down from generation to generation.

Images of America: Kentucky's Horse-Drawn Era takes a look at the days when animals--mostly horses and mules--supplied the "horsepower" for daily life in Kentucky. The animals' work included hauling buggies, carriages, wagons, hearses, circus wagons, parade floats, bookmobiles, coal cars, school buses, and everything and everyone in between. This book even has a photograph of a mule team pulling a two-story house down the street of a small town in Kentucky; other unusual images feature a "high-diving" horse and the winners of the Mule Derby. These vintage photographs highlight horses and mules in some of the many roles they filled before the advent of the automobile, the pickup truck, and the tractor.