Imagine walking into an old country store and there is a guy sitting around a pot-bellied stove. He looks up and says, “Hello! You must be new here. Whatcha do for a living, son? Horseshoeing? Well son, have a seat and lemme tell ya about horses, horseshoeing and blacksmithing!” This is the essence of Leonard Crotts’ book, Shoeing to Win, Memoir of a Master Farrier and Blacksmith.

Following his previous works, Simon Curtis set out to write a book about the horse’s hoof, based on science. Not the horse’s foot and its internal structures, but a book on just the hoof capsule. In that endeavor Dr. Curtis was eminently successful in “The Hoof of the Horse.”