Yankee Doodle Dandy: The Life and Times of Tod Sloan »

Winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award for his Opera in America: A Cultural History, John Dizikes is an emeritus professor of American studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

In the 1890s, when jockey Tod Sloan first assumed a low crouching position over the neck of his horse, he precipitated a revolution in horse racing. This entertaining book recounts the story of the feisty jockey, famed throughout the U.S. and Great Britain at the turn of the century. Award-winning author John Dizikes evokes the turbulent, colorful world of racing and gambling and in the process illuminates such topics as the lionizing (and demonizing) of celebrities and the democratization of sport.

Washington Post - Jonathan Yardley

Sloan's story is well worth telling and that John Dizikes tells it very well in Yankee Doodle Dandy....[H[is influence on his sport and on American culture was substantial and lasting. This first-rate book gives it, and him, all due credit.