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The Man Who Listens to Horses

The Story of a Real-life Horse Whisperer

by Monty Roberts

Summary

The author's account of his unique relationship with horses is part memoir, part "how-to" book on the power of nonverbal communication. Since the age of 2, Roberts has been riding horses and observing their behavior. The son of a violent horse trainer who was critical of his son's unconventional methods, Roberts worked as a rodeo rider in California before adapting his experiences to the corporate sphere. Drawing on the lessons he learned training horses, Roberts now advises companies on how to improve relations in the workplace.

Customer Reviews

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Media Reviews

"The surprisingly complex and lively memoir of a successful and influential horse trainer who helped pioneer nonviolent methods of breaking horses in."

   -- Kirkus

"Although Roberts is clearly an educated and thoughtful man, he doesn't bother to explain or analyze either his childhood or his manhood....He knows who he is, and he's decided to tell us his stories, because they are a part of him and he senses their importance."

   -- Washington Post Book World

"...Monty Roberts's odyssey...will first break, then mend your heart."    -- Maxine Kumin

   -- New York Times Book Review

"Monty Roberts has nearly the skill with words that he has with the body language of horses, and can explain complicated and subtle phenomena well enough to be understood even by those who have limited contact with quadrupeds."

   -- Nation

Bibliographic Details

Publisher: Random House Inc
Published date: 1997
Size: 6.75 x 10 inches
Weight: 1.35 pounds
Pages: 258

Publisher's Notes

Monty Roberts is a real-life horse whisperer--an American original whose gentle training methods reveal the depth of communication possible between man and animal. He can take a wild, high-strung horse who has never before been handled and persuade that horse to accept a bridle, saddle, and rider in thirty minutes. His powers may seem like magic, but his amazing "horse sense" is based on a lifetime of experience. Roberts started riding at the age of two, and at the age of thirteen he went alone into the high deserts of Nevada to study mustangs in the wild. What he learned there changed his life forever. Monty Roberts has spent his whole life working with horses--schooling them, listening to them, and learning their ancient equine language. In The Man Who Listens to Horses, he tells about his early days as a rodeo rider in California, his problems with his violent horse-trainer father, who was unwilling to accept Montys unconventional training methods, his friendship with James Dean, his struggle to be accepted in the professional horse-training community, and the invitation that changed his life--to demonstrate his method of "join-up" to the Queen of England. From his groundbreaking work with horses, Roberts has acquired an unprecedented understanding of nonverbal communication, an understanding that applies to human relationships as well. He has shown that between parent and child, employee and employer (he's worked with over 250 corporations, including General Motors, IBM, Disney, and Merrill Lynch), and abuser and abused, there are forms of communication far stronger than the spoken word and that they are accessible to all who will learn to listen. This inspirational and gentle man, first introduced to the American public on Dateline NBC, is part James Herriot, part Bill Gates, and part John Wayne. And his story is one you will never forget.

Other Editions

• Hardcover - Random House Inc (1997) - from $1.00
• Paperback - Ballantine Books (1998) - from $1.00

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