Summary of Elizabeth Letts' The Perfect Horse

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 Alois Podhajsky was a classical dressage rider who competed in the 1936 Olympics. He was born with a shadow, as he was severely wounded in the neck while serving in the trenches in Flanders in 1918, and he suffered from shell shock. His love for horses brought him back slowly, but the deep stillness of a defeated warrior never left him.

#2 The Austrian tradition of riding was without peer, but Podhajsky knew that many found his country’s traditions backward-looking. He wanted to prove that the Austrian tradition of horsemanship was the best in the world.

#3 The sport of dressage requires the most discipline. It asks horse and rider to execute a series of carefully prescribed movements. The arena was laid out with geometrical precision on the clipped lawn of May Field.

#4 The equestrian events at the 1936 Berlin Olympics were a piece of nationalistic theater disguised as a sporting event. The Nazis had camouflaged many of their anti-Jewish policies, but a latent menace and violence lurked just beneath the whitewashed surface.

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Release date

Ebook: July 8, 2022