The Long Ride: The Record-Setting Journey by Horse Across the American Landscape

IPPY 2012 Outstanding Books of the Year, "Most Likely to Save the Planet" Award

Benjamin Franklin Award Finalist for Autobiography/Memoirs

A vivid, sweeping, passionate story about a modern-day adventure, this is a beautiful chronology of Lucian Spataro and his team’s record-setting Arabian horse ride across the United States to draw attention to the destruction of the world’s rainforests. Told with wit and eloquence, the story moves from the beaches and crowded streets of Los Angeles, across Death Valley and the Painted Desert, through hundreds of towns and cities in the Midwest, before ending on the East Coast in an effort to bring an eye to environmental issues that in 1989 had no visibility or advocate in the United States. The urgency and importance of Spataro’s mission remains today as 20 years later the situation has not improved. Like the original ride itself, this book serves as both a report from the environmental front line and a fresh call to action.