Here Comes Exterminator! ─ The Longshot Horse, the Great War, and the Making of an American Hero

Before Seabiscuit there was Exterminator, a thoroughbred who won more stakes races than Man o' War and Secretariat combined, and whose staggering success would dramatically change the world of horse-racing. His success challenged the notion that American horses would never live up to Europe's meticulously charted bloodlines and made him a patriotic icon of the country after World War I. His longevity established him as one of the public's most beloved athletes and celebrities, and he appeared in ads, films, and newspapers nationwide.

Eliza McGraw's Here Comes Exterminator! draws readers into the Golden Age of Racing, with all its ups and downs, the ever-involving interplay of horses and people, and the beauty, grace, fear, and hope that are a daily part of life at the track. In detailed, lively, and polished prose, New York Times and Washington Postcontributor Eliza McGraw describes how Exterminator paved the way for equine celebrities like Seabiscuit, and showed Americans they could claim--and love--a famous racehorse as their own.

ELIZA MCGRAW is a contributing writer for EQUUS magazine and author of two instructional equestrian books as well as two academic works. Her horse-related writing has appeared in The Chronicle of the Horse,The Blood-Horse,Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred, Raceday 360, the New York Times’ racing blog, and The Washington Post. She has taught at American University and earned degrees from Columbia University and Vanderbilt University. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her family, and keeps her paint mare Sugar in Potomac, Maryland.