About the author
Sherman Kent (1903–86) was a professor of history at Yale University. He is quite possibly also the only horse story author to work for the CIA. He pioneered many methods of intelligence analysis, and retired from the CIA in 1967. His one horse story was based on his own childhood, when, like the heroes of his story, he attended the Thacher School, where horses and riding were a major part of the curriculum. Whether he maintained his interest in horses as a rest from the rigours of life in the CIA I have not been able to find out.
Finding the book
Easy to find.
Links and sources
Sherman Kent on Wikipedia
Sherman Kent and the Profession of Intelligence Analysis – the CIA
Terri Wear: Horse Stories: An Annotated Bibliography
Thanks to Lisa Catz for the summary
Bibliography (horse story only)
A Boy and a Pig, but Mostly Horses
Dodd, Mead & Company, New York, 1974, 151 pp , illus Sam Savitt
The story is drawn from the author’s experiences as a boy. Like the boys in the story, he attended the Thacher school in Ojai, California, where horses and horsemanship are a major part of the curriculum, and helped out on his brother’s ranch in the summer. In the story, Simon’s older brother
invites him and a friend to spend the summer helping out on his ranch in Nevada. Before they go, there is the school’s weekend trip to Santa Cruz island, where they capture Augusta, the wild pig that Simon adopts. At the ranch, there is a lot of dry, dusty work to do, but also a lot of adventures including runaway colts, an outlaw horse, rescuing a neglected mare named Dolly, and a
hair-raising camping trip.
