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How About Horse Books That Shout
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We'll start with a couple of our favorites, which we can heartily recommend.
These two horse books, by the same author, are consistently on best-sellers lists.
- The New Encyclopedia of the Horse and Ultimate Horse both by Elwyn Hartley Edwards contain excellent photography, by-breed descriptions, and equine history. The Encyclopedia of the Horse is the more comprehensive of the two. It is our favorite and a book we believe any horse lover will thoroughly enjoy.
If you would like to find out more about either of these books, clicking on the cover illustration will take you to Poweels.com.
There are a number horse books by Elwyn Hartley Edwards available. Some qualify as "I Love Horses " books, others are more "how-to" types.Most of the horse books by this prolific author make fine gift ideas.If you are looking more towards a book emphasizing equine photography, there are several such books that we can suggest.
- Among our
equestrian horse art
gift ideas was the photography of David Stoecklein. In The Performance Horse: A Photographic Tribute , Stoecklein takes us inside the world of performance horses, turning his lens upon the superathletes of equestrian sport. The major disciplines are all featured: reining, cutting, barrel racing, and roping; hunter/jumper, three-day eventing, dressage, and driving, racing and polo. The Performance Horse is a visually stunning tribute to man's equine companions.
Related horse books by Stoecklein include The Montana Cowboy: Legends of the Big Sky Country,Images of the Spirit of the West ,
and, an interesting trilogy by Stoecklein: One of these three books would make a good companion gift to a pair of boots, a buckle, or a set of spurs.
- Horses of the Sun by Robert Vavra is a marvel of photographic work.
When you first browse through this book you will feel a sensation that there is something different about the photographs, they are something more than just great photographs.
What occurred to us is that Vavra had captured the personality of each of the horses; you could see it in their eyes. Although the horses were running "free", you sensed they knew you were watching.
You may also feel a slight tinge of sadness, the kind we sometimes feel when we see something very beautiful that is right there but if we reach out we can't quite touch it or claim it as out own.
Robert Vavra has photographed six breeds in this work. The arabian, andalusian,morgan, American saddlebred, Peruvian paso, and argueably the most photogenic of all, the Freisian. The photographs of Frans, the Fresian are, well, "magical". The photographs are accompanied by fine verse and at the end of the book you will read about each of the subjects that were photographed. These are preceded by fine narrative on the History of the Andalusian, the "steed of warriors and kings" by Valerie Hemingway.
(Valerie Hemingway is an accomplished freelance writer who lives in Bozeman, Montana. She worked for a time as Ernest Hemingway's secretary (she did the typing for "The Movable Feast") and acquired the Hemingway name through marriage to one of his sons). This is a fine, fine coffee table book which we can highly recommend.
Vavra's horse books have sold more than 3 million copies - unheard-of for a purveyor of expensive coffee-table volumes amid a relatively small niche. And when Delacorte Press needed a cover shot for Nicholas Evans' The Horse Whisperer - Vavra.
You may wish to view some photographs from the "Horses of the Sun Gallery" as well as other examples of his work at Robert Vavra's web site.
