Letters from Country Life: Adolphe Pons, Man o' War, and the Founding of Maryland's Oldest Thoroughbred Farm

2024 Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award Winner

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.

In 2016, in the basement of his farmhouse, Josh Pons discovered thousands of letters from his grandfather’s life in the Thoroughbred horse business. The son of a French cook who came to New York City in 1894, Adolphe Pons got his start working in the Fifth Avenue mansion of Gilded Age banker August Belmont II. Adolphe became his personal secretary, and later 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 after the station stop on the Long Island Railroad nearest his Garden City home.

In serial form, Josh Pons expands on the column he wrote for the leading horse publication The BloodHorse, inviting readers to once more step into the attic garret alongside him as he recovers long-lost voices speaking out of letters, telegrams, and photos. Upon the attic stage appear Gilded Age tycoons from whom the author’s grandfather bought and sold horses against the backdrop of World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II. As Josh draws from the farmhouse’s rich archive, he chronicles his grandfather’s life and times and shares his own candid reflections. The result is a fascinating and fresh look at the Golden Age of Horse Racing and how the past influences our present.

Josh Pons won two Eclipse Awards for his journalism in BloodHorse magazine, presented for best stories of the year in the sport of Thoroughbred racing. He is the author of three books published by Eclipse Press: Country Life Diary: Three Years in the Life of a Maryland Horse Farm, which sold 10,000 copies, Merryland: Two Years in the Life of a Thoroughbred Training Farm, and Letters from Country Life: Adolphe Pons, Man o' War, and the Founding of Maryland's Oldest Thoroughbred Farm.

Pons joined BloodHorse upon graduation from the University of Virginia, where he majored in English. After three years as a journalist, he entered the University of Kentucky Law School, graduating in 1982, then returned to his family’s Country Life Farm.

Professionally, he served as president of the Maryland Horse Breeders Association for six years and is currently president of the foundation responsible for the Maryland Horse Library and Education Center. He and his wife, Ellen, live in Fallston, Maryland, on Country Life, the oldest Thoroughbred farm in the state, together with an extended Pons family of all ages.