PIPPA FUNNELL: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY. Pippa Funnell with Kate Green. Orion Books. Distributed by Trafalgar Square, No. Pomfret, VT 05053. 289 pp. Illus. 2005. $35.00.

If you’re dying to know more about Pippa Funnell, the rider who took home the Rolex Grand Slam in 2003, her horses and her life, this book delivers.

Funnell lays out her life story chronologically, from her first pony to her Olympic bronze medal in Athens a year ago. She describes her greatest wins and lowest moments with a complete lack of arrogance and the typical eventer attitude of “I may be on top today, but I’ll be on the bottom tomorrow.”

The strength of this book lies in Funnell’s voice. Her humor and humility come through, no matter the situation. She’s able to convey the special place that horses–and dogs too–have in her life and how important her relationships with animals are to her.

This can get confusing at times as Funnell remem-bers all the important horses in her life and switches back and forth between their barn names and their show names. Some-times they get injured, fade out of the picture, and then appear again as if by magic.

Funnell doesn’t go into depth about her training program, although there are tidbits in there. But she does give readers an honest look at what it takes to be a top eventer. She recalls waking up at 3 a.m. to clean stalls because her help had quit, and she discusses what it takes to keep 14 horses in work and on a schedule.

She also lets the reader into her mind as she explains her struggles with her nerves and describes the toll that riding takes on her personal relationships. Even the accomplishments can be daunting, as she found out when winning the Rolex Grand Slam made her a household name in the equestrian world.

It’s likely that there’s a lot more of Funnell’s life and career left to write, since she’s already won her first Badminton CCI**** (England) since the book was published. But it’s a great start in getting to know a rider who’s already a legend in her own time.

Sara Lieser

AMERICAN SYSTEM OF FORWARD RIDING. R. Scot Evans and Shelby French. Affiliated National Riding Commission. www.anrc.org. 2 volumes. 2005. $89 per volume.

Here’s the bottom line on this comprehensive work seeking to spread the theories first espoused by the great Capt. Vladimir Littauer: Everyone should know how the philosophy works, but you’ll need a serious commitment to make it work from this presentation.

The two separate volumes come neatly packaged with four DVDs and two thorough workbooks. And the first DVD begins with great horsemen Joe Fargis, Lendon Gray and Pam Baker describing Capt. Littauer’s theory of forward riding and what it’s meant to them. But it’s a challenge to follow the progression from there.

Unlike most of the early 20th century’s great horsemen, Capt. Littauer believed that everyone should be able to do ride. But Littauer, who died in 1989, wanted to be sure that the horses they rode were comfortable and happy, so he developed his theory of forward riding, based on the teachings of the revolutionary Italian Federico Caprilli.

Consequently, hosts R. Scot Evans and Shelby French (who are also authors of these volumes) spend much of their airtime emphasizing quiet, patient and thoughtful riding and training of both horses and rider. They also encourage (and show) riders walking, trotting and cantering outside the ring, in the lush and rolling fields around Sweet Briar College in Virginia, where the DVDs were filmed. And there’s no doubt that those principles need to be expressed as often as possible in the environment of today’s “horse industry.”

(Sweet Briar College and its retired riding department head, Paul Cronin, are the heart of the Affiliated National Riding Commission, which produced these volumes. Cronin was a protege of Capt. Littauer’s.)

But the DVDs seem stuck in a kind of purgatory. They’re primarily aimed at beginner or novice riders, but Evans and French regularly attempt to explain rather advanced concepts (like using the indirect rein and longeing theory), which those riders can’t possibly grasp in this format. Plus, the camera work falls far short of zooming in on the key parts of their explanation.

Evans and French introduce many important concepts about position, training and horsemanship. But they appear as potpourri of principles and goals. How to achieve them needs to be explained far more clearly and progressively before a camera. They reverently describe the elements to Littauer’s theory, but how to develop those skills could be explained more progressively.

Fortunately, that deficiency gets addressed in the workbooks that accompany each volume (80 pages for Vol. 1; 100 pages for Vol. 2). The workbooks illustrate and diagram scores of exercises to help ride comfortably and happily in any circumstance. And the Vol. 1 workbook contains the e-mail address of 13 ANRC instructors or judges, including Cronin and French, who’ll evaluate videotapes of riders seeking to progress.

John Strassburger

AMERICA’S LAST WILD HORSES. Hope Ryden. The Lyons Press. Guilford, CT 06537. 345 pp. Illus. 2005. $18.95.

The allure of America’s wild Mustangs is a palpable part of this country’s heritage. From the Western genre of film, to Disney’s animated movies, the Mustang has been romanticized and is now an indelible imprint in the country’s conscious.

Author Hope Ryden has delivered a fascinating history of these horses, but the strength of Ryden’s book is the rich research she must have had to do to so thoroughly map that history. She writes engagingly in first person, and the first part of her book explores how the Mustang came to America and transformed the West, first for the Indians and then for the settlers. And as she tells their story, she imparts a great deal of American history too.

She describes how the Mustang transported the Indian tribes who learned to domesticate them from a relatively complex culture of hunter/gatherers to the less complex culture of free-roaming tribes. It’s an eye-opener to be asked to consider that the horse did not move the Indian tribes further up the evolutionary scale, but perhaps moved them a little backward.

From then on, each of her chapters tells specific parts of the Mustang story. From a look at herd behavior, to the stallions as overlords, to a few chapters on famous Mustang wranglers, to the slaughter of the buffalo herds, Ryden methodically gives the reader a firm grasp on the travails of America’s wild herds.

But the true reason Ryden wrote this book was to make people aware of the precipitous state of the herds on the plains today. Ryden helped ensure the passage of the 1971 Wild and Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act, which grants Mustangs special protection. But now that bill is threatened in Congress.

Ryden addresses these latest changes in her forward and expounds on the political role in this potential tragedy.

You can learn as much about American history as you have in a long time and gain a new appreciation for just how much these horses made us the country we are today.

Nicole Lever