Ulrich Raulff gives culture history its spurs: His magnificent book tells the story of the most important helpers of humanity that once shaped our society. The exodus of the horse from human history is an astonishingly overlooked phenomenon. Entire libraries on the history of the 19th and 20th centuries remain silent about the horse, which was nonetheless ubiquitous in Europe and America—until the last century of horses during the time of Napoleon comes to an end with the First World War. In his new book, Ulrich Raulff pulls out all the stops of cultural and literary history and describes, with impressive narrative skill, a fading world.