It's the rare book on thoroughbred racing that gets published and promoted by the mainstream press these days, because the "Sport of Kings" is lucky to draw a decent TV audience for even the Kentucky Derby.

Jim Squires, former editor of the Chicago Tribune, has managed to pull it off. A thoroughbred breeder since 1990, he earned a shot at the publishing big time with his first racing book, "Horse of a Different Color," about the breeding and raising of Monarchos, the gray speedster who won the 2001 Derby, on his Two Bucks Farm in Kentucky.

He and the farm figure prominently in "Headless Horsemen," but his exhilarating ride to the top now is going the other way as the book picks up in 2008. Squires, now 66, is alone in his suffering from kidney stones, about which he writes humorously, but he has plenty of horsemen for company in his struggle against a bad economy made worse by an overabundance of horses for sale.

At the prestigious July 2008 Fasig-Tipton yearling sale, nearly half the youngsters consigned go unsold. That includes three of the four he consigned, and the one sold went for only $20,000, which would go to cover entry and sales costs.

An industry gadfly outspoken on the need to rid the sport of drugs that might enhance performance, Squires is mortified when his promising horse, Stones River, posts a positive drug test.

Because his trainer, Larry Jones, is equally anti-drug, the two can only conclude that either the horse or the test has been tampered with, perhaps to get back at the two men for their position on drug use.

There are other personal travails, but Squires always ties them into the larger picture. That's why the book is subtitled "A Tale of Chemical Colts, Subprime Sales Agents and the Last Kentucky Derby on Steroids." Squires suggests that race was last year.

He writes about the use of Winstrol, or stanozolol, noting that it is the same anabolic steroid an athletic trainer claimed to have administered to Roger Clemens and the one that cost Ben Johnson his Olympic gold medal.

Now, new laws in several states have restricted or banned the use of those drugs.

Anecdotes like that, coupled with his colorful and frequently funny writing, are why the book works for an audience broader than that of racing fans.