Makes a great gift If you have a friend or family member who loves horses, this is the kind of book they can use as an interesting reference/coffee table style book. It is oversized, with lot of quality photos. I think the thing I enjoyed most about this book was the nuggets of historical information on how some breeds developed. Demonstrating how the Vladimer breeds were linked to the Clydesdales with dates and names of breeders gives people who are doing research enough to get started.
In my view most of the photos were beautiful.
This is a great book.
A very good general reference book... A wonderful generic guide book (softcover). Lavishly photographed with many excellent photos of breeds from all over the world. Covers many breeds, disciplines, tack, care and grooming. Rather poor coverage (as in hardly at all) of American western events (cutting, roping, reining, western pleasure/trail classes), equipment and tack - but there are other books that cover these subjects better and in depth.
I am glad to see British horse books now correctly referring to the American Paint breed as "Paint Horse" and not "pinto".
Unlike the "Ultimate Horse Book" (Elwyn Hartley Edwards) in which text is mostly complimentary to the photo and limited in facts; this books' breed profile pages are choc full of facts, breed description info, and history. The editors have done their homework and research here.
Editors of generic all-encompassing breed books (not just horses, but dogs, cats, etc) are notorious for gleaning information from OTHER breed books, rather than checking facts, or checking with the orginal breed registry first. This book however, looks like they've got the facts (and sources) straight.
This book is an excellent all-encompassing guide for the horselover.
