Cassidy's investigation reveals the factors--ethical, cultural, political, and economic--that have shaped the racing tradition.

As might be imagined from its historic position as the acknowledged home of horse racing, there is no shortage of books about Newmarket; none, however,provides a definitive history of Newmarket Heath and the key figures who contributed to its transformation from untamed heath land to the world’s finest racing ground. This comprehensive and authoritative book is the first to trace this history from its early beginnings to the present day and to show how and why the sport of horse racing developed on the heath and spread globally from that base. All of the turf’s greatest racehorses and the larger-than-life characters integral to the heath’s history are included.

Newmarket, one of the oldest communities in Ontario, was founded on the Upper Canadian frontier in 1801 by Quakers from the United States. Behind Newmarket's history are the people: tradespeople, aspiring or experienced politicians, rebels, and war heroes. Here are their stories, all illuminating the early history of Newmarket.

Scholars and arm-chair historians of eighteenth-century America will take great pleasure in reading this exceptionally well-researched slice of colonial history. In "The Baylors of Newmarket," author Thomas Katheder has meticulously researched one of the wealthiest and most socially prominent-yet least known-families in colonial Virginia. Drawing on mostly unpublished sources, including British and French archives and Virginia court documents, "The Baylors of Newmarket" is the fascinating and tragic story of Col. John Baylor III and his son John IV, including Col. Baylor's relentless pursuit of equine perfection and his son's delusional quest for the perfect Virginia mansion. "The Baylors of Newmarket" places the family in the larger context of a pre-Revolutionary Anglo-Virginian elite that sought to emulate the British gentry in culture, education, books and reading, dress, furnishings, and behavior. After the Revolution, the Baylors struggled to maintain what was becoming an increasingly outmoded lifestyle. This extensively referenced history also describes in rich detail the library begun by Col. Baylor III and expanded by his son John IV within the context of a strong book culture among the pre-Revolutionary Virginia gentry that has been largely underappreciated by scholars.

"The Battle of New Market, though a smaller conflict, represented a crucial moment in the Union's offensive movements in the spring of 1864 and became the last major Confederate victory in the Shenandoah Valley. The results of the battle between Franz Sigel and John C. Breckinridge - with the Virginia Military Institute Cadets pushing the conflict in the Confederates' favor - altered the campaigns of Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee and the course of the American Civil War in Virginia."--Provided by publisher.

In the early 1800s, Timothy Robers, a Quaker millwright from Vermont, drew a flourishing community of fellow Quakers to the area which became the new-market for settles and traders. It soon became the commercial hub of a rich farming area. By the mid-1800s it was a central point on the Ontario, Simcoe, and Huron Railway. Over the following decades, gas deposits were confirmed there and a barge canal was built along with a street railway. In the early 20th century Newmarket languished through a long period of slow growth — wars and the Depression took a terrible toll on the small town. Yet in the 1940s it was another war that brought thousands of soldiers to Newmarket’s training camp on their way to battlefields in Europe. It took the 1960s to bring real prosperity — builders began developing the inexpensive land, industries came, and the town flourished. The pace of construction continued through the 1980s as Newmarket prepared for its busy life of today.