My friends at the United States Trotting Association-- yes, I still have a few friends there-- were kind enough to send me Nicole Kraft's new picture-book, "100 Years in Harness," and it was a delight to thumb through.
The older pictures from our sport transcend it, shedding new (or renewed) light and shadows upon a long-ago time that has not been chronicled nearly enough. For example, I did not know that Muhammad Ali once dressed up as a harness driver or that James Cagney-- it is the Fourth of July after all-- once took in a harness race or two.
Some of the photos-- okay, many of the photos-- touch up against art. For example, the photograph of Bob Farrington on page 121 could come out of any museum coffee table book chronicling the best photography of the 20th Century. Only it's.... Bob Farrington! Likewise, the photograph on pages 86-87 is masterful in its detail.
I really liked the book. I liked the sparse text accompanying the photographs. And I liked that it's priced at $25.00. My only quibble is with the quality of the paper upon which the images are presented. It's thinner than most books of this sort and the thinness affects how the pages turn. But that's only a minor thing. This was well done and deserves a place in any harness library.
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