"How the cult of high profits triumphed at the expense of quality, staffing and the public trust." Jim Squires, AJR, 1992. Prescient about the media business, equally so about breeding and sales? [For background, Headless Horsemen review.]

"Before we had Twitter, before the Internet, and before much of anything beyond the telephone I waited at a newsstand for the arrival of Esquire one February day in 1974. The magazine appeared on time as promised with the article everyone in the Bluegrass couldn’t wait to read. Its title: “How Kentucky Lures the Super Rich.” After a brief, quick reading I was on a pay phone dictating a story about the article to the newsroom in time to make the afternoon deadline."

"Disenchantment sets in, there's some ugliness and then it's pretty much over. But that rapture you can't forget, and the disillusionment, and so there has to be the long goodbye letter, which, because this is Jim Squires, turns into a book. You could call it a swan song, or you could call it a 250-page flip of the middle finger to his one-time love."