If you want to go the fiction route the Thoroughbred series kept me entertained for YEARS around that age.
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True that.
By the time I read Hunter Seat Equitation, I was an adult and this would’ve been the third edition circa 1990 and I was reading it in the mid-2010s - I don’t know what the earlier editions were like and I only managed to read Hunter Seat Equitation all the way through exactly once. And by the time I’d have regularly been reading his Practical Horseman column it would’ve been the early 2010s when he’d “mellowed out” so to speak, in the sense that he wasn’t like, blatantly berating people so much. The most he’d do was nitpick turnout, as I seem to recall.
Bear in mind too, by the time I was reading any of the old jumping-oriented classics, I was a 20-something adult who was able to read the more dated aspects of those classics and view them through the lens of what made them classics and, frankly, still worth reading today, while also being able to recognize the not-so-great parts for what they are and acknowledge they were products of their time.
And yup, Morris himself didn’t really have a strong foundation in horse care and handling and yup, he mentioned it in Unrelenting. I don’t even think, from what I recall of Unrelenting, that he truly had a solid foundation in training a horse, either.
I mean - think about it, he was riding on the USET by the time he was…what…20? He first made the USET during the '58 season (I’m generally a horse history geek, particularly towards show jumping, looooong story that) so yeah. And he was the youngest rider on that team, which consisted of Morris, Chapot, Steinkraus and Hugh Wiley. Steinkraus and Wiley would’ve both been in their early 30s, Chapot was…like, what, maybe in his mid-20s, and then Morris, so.
And Steinkraus obviously went on to compete in five Olympics and win individual gold at the '68 Olympics. Wiley was actually fairly accomplished in his own right, winning the 1958 and 1959 King George V Gold Cup riding Master William and Nautical, respectively and being the first rider from the US to win that particular event in consecutive years, an accomplishment not repeated until Beezie Madden and Cortes C won it back-to-back in 2014 and 2015 (I think), respectively. And then with Nautical, Wiley would’ve earned individual gold at the '59 Pan Am games had they awarded individual medals that year.
So yeah, even for having competed internationally, Morris wasn’t nearly as good as his teammates. Which, actually I think he also might’ve acknowledged somewhere in Unrelenting - pretty sure it’s pretty well-known that Morris himself has noted he wasn’t blessed with a ton of natural riding ability. His reputation was made more as a coach/trainer.
(Sorry for the tangent I am a huge horse history geek but I feel like I’m a little rare in that I don’t necessarily instantly glorify the old days. I respect it, there are equestrians from that era I respect but I dislike the way equestrians of a certain generation often seem to think that every-single-thing was perfect and wonderful in the olden days and everything today sucks. There was good and bad back then, just as there’s good and bad today. Learn from the mistakes, appreciate the positive aspects and take away what you can from that and think critically. Don’t just put the nostalgia goggles on and leave them there. Seems it’s worse in eventing than in hunter/jumpers, sometimes, too, but that’s a tangent for another time.)
EDIT: And in classic “flame suit ready” fashion - I am not criticizing anyone’s riding, just noting Morris, from a “winning big things” standpoint wasn’t as accomplished as a lot of folks with casual knowledge pre-SafeSport nailing him might’ve assumed at first glance and I am also not saying I’m anywhere near as good as any of those riders were, obviously. Nope. 
In full honesty the highest I think I’ve even jumped is maybe 2 feet (?) I don’t even know, I wasn’t focusing on the size of the jumps in those lessons, I was focusing on making sure I was in the right position, etc. and then 20-something life happened and I’ve found myself horseless and barn-less for the moment.
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A librarian gives a review of A Very Young Rider at https://awfullibrarybooks.net/very-young-rider/.
The critique is pretty funny, but the comments section is even better.
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I have literally never heard of the book beyond seeing a few people mention it on here, but that line is a definite yikes.
And then the comments - yeah you can tell that review was written before it all came out about Morris, there are people defending it that I’m thinking (optimistically) wouldn’t defend it so much today. (He still has his defenders but I feel like he’s starting to fade into the past more and more) Ooh but there are some great comments that add nuance to the discussion (first one I saw was someone defending Morris back in 2010).
Okay - now here’s the thing to me that’s interesting. I’ve again, read other books on the subject of jumping by other riders from Morris’s era, all of which are not very much more recent than anything Morris wrote. While yes, the books did, I believe (it’s been maybe a year or more since I’ve read any of them so I could be wrong) emphasize (briefly) that it’s important to be fit to ride, especially as you move up the levels, none of them has this emphasis on it in a “don’t be fat” manner, it’s more about the reality of yes, you’re going to need to be fit enough to keep up with the demands of what you’re doing and it’s not something that goes in-depth or advises one starve themselves.
Actually I’m reading Jimmy Wofford’s autobiography now, and it’s striking to me how back then, these guys, despite being top level eventers, which is one of the most demanding sports, really didn’t know that much about fitness, because people, generally, didn’t. Wofford would basically just eat like, a piece of fruit and some cheese for lunch, ride horses, hit the gym and get on a rowing machine or what have you, and that was it. He himself points out that back then they had no nutritionists, etc. and how he was eating to keep himself fit and keep his weight down was not ideal.
I’d say the understanding of fitness is something that’s improved considerably in the sport since the so-called “good ol’ days.”
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Thank you for this post!
You are absolutely right, GM is not a particularly good writer.
Hunter Seat Equitation was considered the bible and a classic mostly because of the incredibly detailed photography, which was pretty rare at the time. (Remember back in they day, before cell phone cameras and YouTube, when we all devoured Practical Horseman for the incredibly detailed step by step photos?) And because there weren’t many other books specifically about hunters and hunter seat equitation.
Anna Jane White Mullen’s Judging Hunters and Hunter Seat Equitation is actually much more useful as a reference.
Unrelenting, IMO, was a mess and his editor must have torn his hair out.
I do agree that Steinkraus was a better rider, horseman and writer.
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Okay - now I get it I think I’d half-forgotten about the photography or maybe b/c I’m a millennial 
it didn’t stand out to me like it might’ve to readers when the book came out. I mean, 1990 was a couple of years before I was born and that was the third edition.
By the time I read it (again, pre-SafeSport nailing) it had basically been internet meme’d into jokingly being the horse world’s bible but no one really had the context of why it was considered such. Like, the context got sucked away into a vacuum and was lost but the regard for the book somehow remained. And then I read it having already read Reflections on Riding and Jumping and as a person who, not to brag here, but is a rather solid writer myself, I’m just like, “okay, the general riding knowledge is sound enough, the mention of poling is very much a product of its time (and was also mentioned in other books by those from that era and come to think of it Steinkraus’s books, IIRC, both mentioned it but also very much cautioned that it wasn’t a good practice, etc. more so than Morris did.) but I’m drowning in a sea of excess verbiage.”
And I was starting to ride english and devouring his Practical Horseman columns circa 2012 and those weren’t so verbose. Probably because word limits and space constraints exist.
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I think we’ve hit on something here, forfeit.
My own North Stars for reference were Commonsense Horsemanship and the Gordon Wright book, both of which described a system, with clearly defined levels and progression. The Gordon Wright book has excellent drawings and illustrations, Commonsense doesn’t, and Commonsense can be some heavy going in places because it was written by someone with English as a second language.
The Pony Club manuals written by the late, wonderful Susan Harris are another great example of info being laid out in an easy to understand systemic way.
That’s what’s missing from HSE - a system. You just get photos of a young Katie Monahan doing things perfectly and a lot of hammering on the same points.
During the 80s and 90s, we all waited eagerly for the next issue of PH, and poured over the step by step photos. I learned clipping and braiding techniques and new gymnastic exercises from PH. Again, there wasn’t YouTube or digital photography, and no one else was investing in the kind of quality photography that PH was.
It’s now sadly irrelevant, because all of that type of content has moved to the internet.
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Another recommendation for School for Young Riders. My trainer, who rode with Captain Littauer, loaned Mrs. D her hunter when she went off to college. The “Joe” featured in the story is Joe Fargis (his family was too genteel to permit his real name to be listed). Joe would NOT give up that gray pony, even though Joe’s legs sometimes hit the rails.
JMD also wrote Riding the Show Ring Hunter, a small booklet published by Farnam. Farnam also produced a training video by Steinkraus. In it he is big on running up his irons, even before dismounting. Features his wild ride at Mexico.
My first real horse book was Album of Horses, still delightful and belongs in any child’s library. The last chapter is about horse care. My first grown up (young teen) books were A Horse of Your Own, and Gordon Wright, both also recommended.
ETA: A Horse of Your Own was written by Steinkraus’s sister.
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This is such a happy thread. Sadly years ago I lost my copy of School for Young Riders but I just ordered another one from Thrift Books so I can enjoy it again over Christmas.
I have a small riding program with about twenty students and I have a Free Little Library in my tack room stocked with many of the titles mentioned here. But thanks to those who contributed suggestions because I’d like to add some more good ones to share.
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Thank you all for such an incredible discussion! Another thing that does come clear in Morris’s autobiography, even by his own admission, is that his well-heeled parents provided him with trained mounts from a very young age. So again, there isn’t much of a sense of “progression” in horse training versus “getting the performance out of the horse,” which is a different mindset.
Steinkraus on the other hand, had such a fascinating background. For a time, he was a true amateur, and I remember reading in the intro to one of his books he’d work all week on Wall Street and could only ride on the weekends, and he’d use his commuting time to mentally ride his courses, as the only way he could practice. He was a very disciplined person (and, unlike Morris, for what it’s worth, a Yale graduate and served in the calvary).
I’m fascinated by diet history, and it seems like “slimming” advice for many decades involved eating lots of cottage cheese, toast, a tiny piece of lean meat, and maybe some boiled vegetables, or the occasional piece of fruit or cheese as a snack. And Morris never updated his dieting advice from 1965.
I too was fascinated by the Morris Practical Horseman jumping columns, but looking back, I wonder if they just ultimately resulted in placing too much emphasis on creating a pretty picture for one moment in time, versus really effective riding. The other step-by-step and training articles were more useful, although less famous.
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Yes - actually if I have my history right he was a true amateur through his entire competitive career, of course back then to compete at the international levels one had to be. He worked on Wall Street then ended up in book editing and so on.
Actually (shoot I didn’t mean to hijack this thread and turn it into the Steinkraus appreciation club ) here’s a kind of interesting 1958 Sports Illustrated profile on the man, written by an Alice Higgins who did a lot of Sports Illustrateds’ horse show coverage back then: https://vault.si.com/vault/1958/12/15/thinker-on-horseback
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The books that either helped me or which I really, really, really wish had been around in the public libraries when I was in high school.
Jane Marshall Dillon–“School for Young Riders” and her masterpiece “Form Over Fences.” I lucked out, these were in the libraries.
John Richard Young–“Schooling for Young Riders”–about how he and his daughters trained an under 2 pony stallion onwards. This book REALLY helped me when I started training my own horses. His photographs are mostly of his daughters (pre-teen?) riding this little hellion of a colt (he was finally gelded a few years into the book.)
And now for the book that I wish I had run into when I was starting to ride. This is an oldie, pure Forward Seat (the author was partners with Vladimir Littauer in the Boots and Saddles Riding School in NYC.)
It is “School for Riding” by Sergei Kournakoff (no longer in print, pretty cheap when I find it on-line). If only I had been able to read and use this book all of my life, instead I got it when I was over 50 years old, I had ridden for decades, and in my first reading I found THREE things that corrected stuff my riding teacher had been getting after me about. Considering this book was written in 1938 it was the nearest thing to a multi-media presentation available in its day. Lots and lots of photographs of the author’s son learning to ride, the bottom corners of the pages can be “flipped” to make a “movie” and he has comments on each of the 6 or 7 “movies” at the beginning of the book.
Then there are the stick figures, the musical scores for the gaits, the REASONS for doing everything his way, this is probably the best beginning hunt seat book I have ever read and I have read almost everything.
My first horse would have been so much happier with me if I had read Kournakoff’s book instead of listening to my riding teacher who had been a long time student of Gordon Wright. I do know that the miscellaneous lesson horses I ride now are grateful that I was able to become a better rider even as my Multiple sclerosis cripples me worse and worse every year.
If you can get only one book about riding for anyone, make it Kournakoff’s book, it has more easily understandable effective instructions and explanations each page than most riding books have in a hundred pages and is good for riders of all ages. A 9 year old may need a little help understanding it at first.
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Amazing article, thank you! I had no idea. A true renaissance man. Passed just 4 years ago, 11/29/2017.
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I love this book too. Most of the photos are of his 11 yr old son. Marvelous book, even references Rembrandt’s “Polish Rider” painting. Kournakoff and Capt. Littauer partnered and invented an offset English stirrup. Very much like a typical Stubben offset iron.
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Bill Steinkraus was a true amateur, he used to commute by railroad from CT to his job as a book editor in Manhattan but he did have a magnificent private riding facility at his home on Great Island, my trainer had the opportunity to ride there a few times.
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Since we’re all taking a trip down nonfiction memory lane, I remember adoring this one as a kid, Pony Care, by Jay Swallow. It’s very British, so I was quite disappointed when many of the practices didn’t transfer over to the modern US.
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This is available for free online from HathiTrust (https://www.hathitrust.org/).
Link to the book:
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The only disadvantage of the online book is that you cannot flip the page corners to get the “movie”.
Great book even if one cannot flip the page corners. I would have been a MUCH BETTER RIDER if I had read this book before 1970 when I got my first horse.
C. W. Anderson in “Heads Up, Heels Down” writes that he did not put a lot of the nitty gritty about riding properly because Kournakoff’s book did it so well. Of course it was decades out of print when I read Anderson’s book, and he did not give the name of the book either. Back then in the 1960s and early 1970s the serious equitation books I read often referred to an older out-of-print book for an in depth discussion about something. I would grumble but since my parents went mostly to new book stores I was out of luck.
The blessings of Amazon, I could finally find, buy and read all of these old classics of equitation! For hunt seat/Forward Riding Kournakoff’s book is THE BEST ONE!!! (The next best one was “Common Sense Horsemanship” by Vladimir Littauer, the book that got me into riding and training my horses the Forward Seat System. Kournakoff’s book is easier reading and all his illustrations really helped me to understand what he was writing about.
For the fans of A Very Young Rider, COTH did a follow-up about 16 years ago on Vivi and the others in the book. Really nice and interesting read: https://www.chronofhorse.com/article/very-young-rider-grows
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Very Interesting.
So the “Jonathan Devine”, who was George Morris’s assistant, and VIvi’s trainer, is the same person as “Jonathan Soresi”, who has accused George Morris of serious sexual abuse.
And in pure coincidence, I have a dressage saddle, that I bought used, that came with a “Jonathan Soresi” nameplate.
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