Polo: The Emperor of Games Book

This rich and informal social history of polo traces the great and exciting international sport that Winston Churchill called "the emperor of games" through 2,000 years - from its origin at the edge of civilization in ancient Tibet to the royal courts of Persia, to India, where it eventually was taken up by the British, down to the present day. Frank Milburn, himself a scion of one of polo's first families, centers his book on the development of the game in the United States. He writes of the halcyon 1920s, when crowds of 40,000 would watch the great Tommy Hitchcock in action on a Long Island greensward as big as fifteen football fields. He describes the fifty-year dominance (the longest in any sport) of Argentina, where the game has become so violent that there is constant risk of death. And he tells of the famous people who have played polo: among them Churchill, Lord Mountbatten, Averell Harriman, and Prince Charles. Finally Milburn talks about polo's current comeback in popularity (without benefit of television), particularly in the American South and Southwest, and his hopes and fears for the future of the sport.