Derby Innovator is the story of the making of Animal Kingdom by Barry Irwin, a self-taught, self-styled sportsman and entrepreneur who shook racing's Establishment to its very foundations by employing unconventional methods and practices to break all the rules in winning the Kentucky Derby, a race that has been called "the greatest two minutes in sports."

Born into a family in Los Angeles that shunned horse racing, Irwin turned a childhood pipedream of winning a racehorse in a tobacco company's naming contest into a stable full of horses that have won some of the most historic and...