Five books help explain the relationship between women & horses

Tory Bilski is a travel writer based in Connecticut. She writes primarily about Iceland - its people, horses, and history. Her new book is Wild Horses of the Summer Sun: A Memoir of Iceland.

At LitHub Bilski tagged "five books that may help explain the relationship between women and horses," including:

Wendy Williams, The Horse: The Epic History of our Noble Companion

Williams approaches the horse with the coolness of a science journalist. What drives her to write the book is her desire to understand her own horses, a quest that is sparked by observing her horses’ sometimes bewildering behavior. She takes us to a few horse cultures throughout the world, but spends a good amount of time looking at horse evolution. She delves into the nitty-gritty of archaeological digs, the fossils of teeth and brain endocasts. The early ancestor of the horse started in the Eocene period 56 million years ago, where they were as small as dogs and ate fruit off trees up. In the Miocene era—considered the epoch of the horse—23 million years ago, the ancestors started three-toed but left the era 5 million years ago as one-toed—a solid hoof.

Williams succinctly joins the natural history of the planet and the horse together: how the eyes, hooves, teeth, and ears of the horse evolved as their environment changed from forests to grasslands as a result of climate change and tectonic plate movements: “What we see by looking into the eyes of the horse is that we are all members of one constantly seething energy system.” Knowing the full history gives the reader (and rider) a clear understanding of the human relationship to horses. The next time you can’t find your horse in the field, follow the sun, because the horse knows to follow the late-day sun to find the best grass.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 99 Test: The Horse.

--Marshal Zeringue