Edward (Ed) Hotaling

The millions of Americans who have already fallen in love with Saratoga or dreamed of it can do so again in this delightful book recapturing Saratoga’s grand and often hilarious history. "George Washington schlepped here," Hotaling reveals as he opens with a little-known visit by the Founding Father himself, who actually tried to buy the place he dubbed "the Saratoga springs" (the name that stuck). How many towns have been named by George Washington? Soon the pursuit of happiness right here in the foothills of the Adirondacks helped redefine America. Long before hip hop, Saratoga was inventing the hop, and even at the height of the Civil War, America’s first organized sport, horse racing, was launched on a national scale at Saratoga. Few realize that Saratoga also gave us modern intercollegiate sports and, among much else, standard time and the potato chip.

And the people! Hotaling writes about the hair-raising adventures of the kidnapped slave Solomon Northup. About the little girl who grew up to be Winston Churchill’s mother. About our notorious early celebrities Lillian Russell and Diamond Jim Brady. And during the Roaring Twenties: about the original Godfather of the Mob, Arnold Rothstein, and the Brains of the Mob, Meyer Lansky, not to mention Jack Dempsey and a very young Bing Crosby. In the Thirties: meet FDR and Seabiscuit at Saratoga, Damon Runyon and Sophie Tucker, Bugsy Siegel and America’ first modern casinos.

Charging down the stretch, year after year, are the superstars of the sport in many of their most celebrated races – Man o’War, War Admiral, Seabiscuit, Whirlaway, Citation, Affirmed and Alydar, Native Dancer, Secretariat. Every summer in upstate New York, the people come, the horses run. It was at Saratoga, with its springs and its races, that America first created the democratic pursuit of pleasure on such a grand scale, and it’s still at it. Saratoga was and is unique. So They’re Off! is a story about sports, the people, and the majestic thoroughbreds--and a story about America itself.