Josh Pons: Letters from Country Life: Adolphe Pons, Man O’ War, and the Founding of Maryland

Join us for an evening with author of Letters from Country Life: Adolphe Pons, Man O' War, and the Founding of Maryland, Josh Pons. Josh Pons, a third-generation horseman and owner of Country Life Farm, depicts a century of life inside the horse business, written from inside the fences of Maryland’s oldest Thoroughbred farm. Josh Pons is a two-time Eclipse Award Writer and 2024 Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award Winner.

In 2016, Josh Pons discovered thousands of letters from his grandfather Adolphe Pons' life in the Thoroughbred horse business. The son of a French cook in the Gilded Age mansions of banker August Belmont II, Pons immigrated to New York City at the age of five in 1888. In time, he became Belmont’s personal secretary and played a major role in Belmont’s breeding and sale of the most famous horse in history: Man o’ War. During the Great Depression, Adolphe left New York and bought a hundred-acre horse farm in Maryland, naming it Country Life.

In expanded form, Josh Pons draws upon the popular column he wrote for three years for BloodHorse magazine, inviting readers along as he unearths long-lost voices of Gilded Age tycoons, their voices speaking out of century-old letters, telegrams, and their images in never-before-seen photos. An epic story set against the backdrop of World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II. The result is a fascinating chronicle and fresh look at the Golden Age of Horse Racing and how the past influences our present.