This was an interesting little book composed of a variety of essays and letters about horses and their ilk written by Mark Twain and compiled by Rasmussen. Some were humorous while others were informative to the contemporary reader. I found that all were somewhat informative in this day and age since I've only had one experience riding a horse about 50 years ago. I read many excerpts aloud to my dogs (using a drawling, raspy voice). I don't know if they were attentive to my voice or if they enjoyed the essays but they stayed at my feet throughout the readings. A fun read!

I like Mark Twain. He’s a man who very much thinks he’s funny — and often is. He cared for animal rights, the rights of people, and in general did his best to leave the world a better place than he found it. And I went into this book eager to read his stories about horses.

And then the AI Art.

I’m sorry, one star and an DNF for me.

A lovely little guide on one of literature's greatest authors through the lens of equestrianism. Informative and fun!

I found the text size too small to comfortably read and wound up having to mess with both netgalley and browser settings to see. Once I could read, I found this book to be different than I was expecting. I was expecting short funny anecdotes, short quotes, possibly a short story or two. This appears to be mostly letters. It's not a bad collection, but I might tweak the description a little. I found the illustrations a little jarring. AI, maybe? Not period photos, surely. That said, I think the whole review should be taken with a grain of salt because I had such a hard time reading the text and wasn't able to read the entire book because I was struggling so badly. Someone who was able to make a closer examination may come away with a different impression.

I think a little more work needed to be done with the photos and illustrations. Some of the historical photos are AI-generated and that could be confusing to readers. I think there needs to be an editorial indication when the photo is AI generated.