Reader Reviews from Amazon.com:
A complete synopsis of Secretariat 
a remarkably well researched and well done bio of one of the greatest race horses. No detail was left out in the life of this horse including his background, breeding, owners, jockeys, trainers, and his influence on racing. I read every word with fascination and could hardly wait to get back to it each day. It was particularly appealing for this life long horse lover and owner of a Thoroughbred breeding farm.
A Nack for Writing
I read this work some years back and considered it as I do now the most comprehensive work on the horse. Bill covers not only Secretariat's pedigree in great depth but also Penny's family ancestry, several generations. In so doing, he covers much of 'whos who' in the ancestry of American racing. Bill covers in depth many of Secretariats races, before and after, all the way through the triple crown events afterwhich he seems to soften up, as if the remaining were just mop-up. I wish he would have added additional material covering his days at Claiborne. If one wishes to become a Secretariat aficionado, this is a must read. There are a number of other works out there but this one I believe is the base from which to start. It is a long read so have fun.
Not unbeaten, but certainly unmatched. 
William Nack, Secretariat: The Making of a Champion 2/E (Da Capo, 2002) I finished this book back in July, and here it is November. I don't know why it is that I sometimes have problems figuring out what to say about a book to the point where I end up leaving it for four months, and why it is that it's always a horse book (to this day, I still have not reviewed Jane Schwartz' Ruffian: Burning from the Start, which I read in 2004) that causes this sort of blockage, but so it is. Obviously, this is the story of Secretariat, the horse who wowed a nation in 1972 and 1973. The subtitle should have twigged me to the fact that the later part of his career was going to get short shrift, but somehow I didn't grasp that until I got to the penultimate chapter and we were still only up to the Belmont. Still, it's your basic horse biography--a focus on the horse himself, yes, but also a lot of talking about the horse's connections. Oftentimes, that's not nearly as interesting (at least, for the horse lover), but Nack's writing combined with the momentous events going on around him at the time keep the areas where the book focuses on the human part of the equation almost as interesting as the parts about Secretariat himself. (Prospective authors of horse biographies may be wondering just how much, in fact, readers can take of reading about stall routines, workouts, getting ready for races, cooling down from races, and all the rest of the minutiae of the horse himself. I'm here to tell you that such a book would be my favorite of the horse biographies I've read.) The new edition of the book published in 2002 also contains, as an afterword, Nack's touching Sports Illustrated essay on Secretariat's death, for which Nack--purely by coincidence--was on hand. Even if you already own the original edition of the book, it's at least worth getting it out of the library to read the supplementary materials in the updated edition. This is very good stuff, as most horse biographies are. ****
The Horse Who Ran History's Greatest Race
No one who watched Secretariat win the Belmont Stakes in 1973 will ever forget that performance. For many, it immediately stamped him as the "greatest racehorse of all time" among many. I thought the same thing, frankly, until recently when I read a book about Man o' War, who really is the best ever if you're objective about it. However, for a Triple Crown series and for one race - that Belmont - no horse ever has ever come close to accomplishing what Secretariat did that year. Secretariat's Belmont was the greastest effort in one race in history. This book will convince you of that. The chapter describing his performance in that incredible 31-length victory in record time (which still stands) is worth the price of book alone! Along with the ups-and-downs of Secretariat's brief career, we get interesting looks at the horse's trainer, Lucien Laurin; the owner "Penny" Tweedy and the jockey, Ron Turcotte, as well as other horse racing notables of the time period. Author William Nack does a wonderful job showing everyone's good and bad sides. Nack is considered one of the best sportswrites of his generation, so you know you're going to get a well-written book here and a worthy author to a most-worthy horse!
A Girl Who Loves Horses
Thirty six years ago I was a girl who loved horses. I fell for Secretariat because he was beautiful. Over the years I have gone to the races to see horses run, because they are beautiful. Nack's book is not about beautiful horses. It is not about flowing manes and streaming tails and the loving relationship between a horse and his humans. It is about horse racing and in particular describing what made Secretariat the phenomenon he was. In clear, magazine like prose--only occasionally lyrical -- Nack covers his breeding, the unromantic coupling that produced the red horse, his gentling and training. More centrally, it covers the background of the farms and families that owned and managed the horse. The two families key to Secretariat are the Chenerys of Meadow Farm, particularly Penny Chenery Tweedy, and the Hancocks of legendary Claiborn Farm. Penny Tweedy and Seth Hancock are nearly as bred for their businesses as the horses they raised. In taking over the management of Meadow Farm, Mrs. Tweedy has to learn the economics of horse racing and take the chances that this expensive and complex industry demands -- and that Nack ably describes. It is a successful farm, but with her father's death, she must do something to raise the cash to pay the stiff inheritance taxes. The syndication of Secretariat raised a then-record breaking $6MM in four days by the nearly as inexperienced, but farmed raised, Seth Hancock. The investors bought into the 1972 Horse of the Year with a fine albeit brief one year record. They were betting that the virgin horse would race well in 1973 and earn enough in stud fees to earn a nice return on their investment.
With this understanding well in place, Nack describes in detail the races of 1973. His race descriptions combine technical detail (racing to the 12s), summaries of the competition, the jockey's strategies. The race narratives get your heart pounding and add suspense when the outcome is already known. These are the best race descriptions I have read--but I could be prejudiced, because he is describing the best running horse of -- perhaps ever. Broken down by starts and furlongs and stretches, the reader is shifted between the being in the saddle from jockey Ron Turcotte's point of view to the view from the rail, watching the entire field. These are thrilling, exciting, moving passages that educate the reader at the same time--strategies around the curve, horses bumping one another, assessing the competition in split second observations.
Nack also describes the players. Mrs. Tweedy does not show as well as her public persona suggests, much to my surprise. (Does Nack not like Mrs. Tweedy?) The Martins who trained Sham also appear badly, supporting that impression with some whining quotes. Most other figures that peopled those two years show well: the Phipps family, the Hancocks, the trainer Lucien Lurien, Ronny Turcotte, groom Eddie Sweat (who seems under served by this book), Charles Hatton, the Racing Form writer who loved Secretariat from the start and score of others who directly or peripherally were part of Secretariat's life. These are all described as a reporter would describe them, without attempts at psychological insight but through observations and extensive quotations. This is not writing for the little girl who loves horses, this is writing for the adults who people horse racing or would like to.
While Nack does not emphasize it unduly, one thing does come through for the girl who loves horses. More often than not, Secretariat ran his own races. The specific strategy was up to his jockey, but when Secretariat felt like running --and he often did -- Turcotte simply let him run, without a whip, without much encouragement at all. The Triple Crown races are deeply detailed but two of them particularly stand out. At the Preakness, early in the race, horse and jockey move from their usual last place out of the gate and circles the field in a quarter mile in a burst of speed that is amazing, stunning all by itself...and all the more stunning when the horse maintains the sprinter's pace. And the 1972 Belmont is beyond superlatives--Secretariat races the small field entirely on his own, Tucotte "sitting chilly", winning by 31 lengths, moving 'like a tremendous machine', running because he loves to run. I wanted to read the races with the book in one hand and the race clips on You Tube in front of me. Nack explains the races in a way my own observation never could, but, boy, to see that big red horse run is enough to make you cry. That is, if you are, or were, a girl who loves horses.
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