Michael Korda stays a bit too long in the saddle with Horse People: Scenes from the Riding Life. Yet this ode to the equestrian world is so elegantly written and engrossing that you almost have to forgive him.

Korda, who is the editor-in-chief at Simon & Schuster when he's not writing his own books, has been around horses his whole life. He learned to ride while a child growing up on the outskirts of London and continued to pursue the pastime on occasion while traveling around Europe as a young man. As he struggled to establish himself on Manhattan's publishing scene, horses fell by the wayside for a number of years. But he eventually found his way back to the paddock via the riding trails of Central Park and a country home in New York's Duchess County.

"Horses have a way of taking over people's lives," writes Korda, and this certainly seems to be the case for him.

Despite stating early on that he's only going to offer "a few words about (his) own involvement with horses," there's no doubt that all 384 pages of this tome are about the author's personal love affair with the equine species and about those around him who share in his passion.

This perspective sits just fine, even with those of us who would rather walk barefoot 5 miles uphill in the snow than mount a 1,000-pound beast that is prone to throwing us head-first onto the ground.

As anyone who has savored other books by Korda knows, part of the author's appeal is that he's such a fine storyteller.

However, Horse People also speaks to the reader because it offers a glimpse into a world of wealth and privilege that few of us will ever be privy to otherwise. Although Korda maintains that "most of the people who keep horses in the United States today aren't rich, or even particularly well-to-do," there is no doubt that the equestrian circles he travels in are far removed from the one-acre horse plots we've all driven by in suburban Denver.

For instance, Korda travels to Middleburg, Va., which he describes as "perhaps the horsiest place in America." There he meets a local man who owns so much land that he is known as "the Duke of Rappahanock."

After a morning of galloping across the duke's vast rolling hills, their riding party stops for lunch in a field. "A station wagon waited for us," Korda writes. "A butler in full livery had laid out a late breakfast on the tailgate - there was champagne in an ice bucket, sherry and Madeira in crystal decanters, a silver thermos of coffee, a wicker picnic basket from Asprey's of London containing a Virginia ham (from one of the Duke's own prize-winning pigs, of course), hard-boiled eggs, fresh bread - everything, in short, one could want. A groom waited to take our horses. We dismounted, and the butler opened the champagne and passed us china plates and silverware from the basket."

It's an image right out of a Ralph Lauren ad, yet beneath it all is an undercurrent of snobbery and bigotry that Korda treads upon carefully. Trotting off to dine with the duke, the author recalls offering to open a gate.

"(The duke) said that wouldn't be necessary - somebody would open it for us. I looked across the field, and there, perhaps a mile away, I saw what appeared to be a very old black man running toward us, one hand on his head to steady his hat," Korda writes. "It was warm, by now - too warm to be running, I thought - but the old man kept coming, flailing away across the gently sloping field to where we waited. . . . The old man, now drenched in sweat, arrived at the gate. He removed his battered old hat, wiped his forehead with a bandanna handkerchief, and bowed slightly. 'Good mornin', sir,' he said to the Duke . . . . As we set off across the field, I heard him close the gate; then, to my surprise, he appeared in front of us, still running as fast as his old legs would carry him, clearly in order to reach the far side before we did, so he could open that gate for us. Which was exactly what happened."

As Korda delivers this anecdote and others like it, he makes a point of rebuking - ever so gently - all those in the upper crust who might offend the reader in any way. It's as if he wants to send the message that although he lives in a world where the horse has long stood for "social superiority, mobility, and not getting your feet wet and muddy like ordinary folk," he doesn't always approve of what goes on there. After all, even he sees that a barn with "crystal chandeliers in the aisle, rare wood paneling, and a heated swimming pool for horses" is a bit preposterous.

If there is anything to seriously fault Korda for, it's the length and repetitiveness of this book. About midway through, the reader is ready to dismount after seeing whole passages repeated in various form, not to mention endless references to the Victorian sporting novelist Robert Smith Surtees and Western writer Larry McMurtry. The author also has an annoying habit of throwing in French phrases without translation.

However, for those who stick it out, this voyeuristic journey into the super-rich world of East Coast horsemanship is a literary ride worth taking.



Karen Algeo Krizman is a freelance writer living in Littleton.