Excerpt
Charles Howard had the feel of a gigantic onrushing machine: You had to either
climb on or leap out of the way. He would sweep into a room, working a cigarette
in his fingers, and people would trail him like pilot fish. They couldn't help
themselves. Fifty-eight years old in 1935, Howard was a tall, glowing man in a
big suit and a very big Buick. But it wasn't his physical bearing that did it.
He lived on a California ranch so huge that a man could take a wrong turn on it
and be lost forever, but it wasn't his circumstances either. Nor was it that he
spoke loud or long; the surprise of the man was his understatement, the quiet
and kindly intimacy of his acquaintance. What drew people to him was something
intangible, an air about him. There was a certain inevitability to Charles
Howard, an urgency radiating from him that made people believe that the world
was always going to bend to his wishes.
On an afternoon in 1903, long before the big cars and the ranch and all the
money, Howard began his adulthood with only that air of destiny and 21 cents in
his pocket. He sat in the swaying belly of a transcontinental train, snaking
west from New York. He was twenty-six, handsome, gen ... read full excerpt from: Seabiscuit ebook
