This is the first comprehensive history of the world's roads, highways, bridges, and the people and vehicles that traverse them, from prehistoric times to the present. Encyclopedic in its scope, fascinating in its details, Ways of the World is a unique work for reference and browsing. Maxwell Lay considers the myriad aspects of roads and their users: the earliest pathways, the rise of wheeled vehicles and animals to pull them, the development of surfaced roads, the motives for road and bridge building, and the rise of cars and their influence on roads, cities, and society. The work is amply illustrated, well indexed and cross-referenced, and includes a chronology of road history and a full bibliography. 

 It is indispensable for anyone interested in travel, history, geography, transportation, cars, or the history of technology.

On rails-to-trails bike paths, city streets, and winding country roads, the bicycle seems ubiquitous in the Badger State. Yet there’s a complex and fascinating history behind the popularity of biking in Wisconsin—one that until now has never been told. Meticulously researched through periodicals and newspapers, Wheel Fever traces the story of Wisconsin’s first “bicycling boom,” from the velocipede craze of 1869 through the “wheel fever” of the 1890s. It was during this crucial period that the sport Wisconsinites know and adore first took shape. From the start it has been defined by a rich and often impassioned debate over who should be allowed to ride, where they could ride, and even what they could wear. 
 Many early riders embraced the bicycle as a solution to the age-old problem of how to get from here to there in the quickest and easiest way possible. Yet for every supporter of the “poor man’s horse,” there were others who wanted to keep the rights and privileges of riding to an elite set. Women, the working class, and people of color were often left behind as middle- and upper-class white men benefitted from the “masculine” sport and all-male clubs and racing events began to shape the scene. Even as bikes became more affordable and accessible, a culture defined by inequality helped create bicycling in its own image, and these limitations continue to haunt the sport today.
Wheel Fever is about the origins of bicycling in Wisconsin and why those origins still matter, but it is also about our continuing fascination with all things bicycle. From “boneshakers” to high-wheels, standard models to racing bikes, tandems to tricycles, the book is lushly illustrated with never-before-seen images of early cycling, and the people who rode them: bloomer girls, bicycle jockeys, young urbanites, and unionized workers.
Laying the foundations for a much-beloved recreation, Wheel Fever challenges us to imagine anew the democratic possibilities that animated cycling’s early debates.

Best known for his Jimmie Dale series of books, which have sold more than 3 million copies worldwide, Frank L. Packard first published The Wire Devils in 1918. A “wire thriller” that uses the booming railroads and telegraph lines of the old West as its backdrop for fast-paced adventure, The Wire Devils follows a criminal gang of the same name who hijack a railroad’s telegraph lines to glean information about profitable shipments. But foiling them again and again is the Hawk, the outlaw hero who robs from the robbers and is ultimately on the side of law and order.

Combining elements from dime-store novels and Packard’s own experience on the rails, The Wire Devils is at once a hybrid western and a thriller still worth reading nearly a century after it was written.

For better or worse, the view through a car’s windshield has redefined how we see the world around us. In some cases, such as the American parkway, the view from the road was the be-all and end-all of the highway; in others, such as the Italian autostrada, the view of a fast, efficient transportation machine celebrating either Fascism or its absence was the goal. These varied environments are neither necessary nor accidental but the outcomes of historical negotiations, and whether we abhor them or take delight in them, they have become part of the fabric of human existence.

The World beyond the Windshield: Roads and Landscapes in the United States and Europe is the first systematic, comparative look at these landscapes. By looking at examples from the United States and Europe, the chapters in this volume explore the relationship between the road and the landscape thatit traverses, cuts through, defines, despoils, and enhances. The authors analyze the Washington Beltway and the Blue Ridge Parkway, as well as iconic roads in Italy, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and Great Britain. This is a story of the transatlantic exchange of ideas about environment and technology and of the national and nationalistic appropriations of such landscaping.

Fresh from successful flights before royalty in Europe, and soon after thrilling hundreds of thousands of people by flying around the Statue of Liberty, in the fall of 1909 Wilbur and Orville Wright decided the time was right to begin manufacturing their airplanes for sale. Backed by Wall Street tycoons, including August Belmont, Cornelius Vanderbilt III, and Andrew Freedman, the brothers formed the Wright Company. The Wright Company trained hundreds of early aviators at its flight schools, including Roy Brown, the Canadian pilot credited with shooting down Manfred von Richtofen—the “Red Baron”—during the First World War; and Hap Arnold, the commander of the U.S. Army Air Forces during the Second World War. Pilots with the company’s exhibition department thrilled crowds at events from Winnipeg to Boston, Corpus Christi to Colorado Springs. Cal Rodgers flew a Wright Company airplane in pursuit of the $50,000 Hearst Aviation Prize in 1911.

But all was not well in Dayton, a city that hummed with industry, producing cash registers, railroad cars, and many other products. The brothers found it hard to transition from running their own bicycle business to being corporate executives responsible for other people’s money. Their dogged pursuit of enforcement of their 1906 patent—especially against Glenn Curtiss and his company—helped hold back the development of the U.S. aviation industry. When Orville Wright sold the company in 1915, more than three years after his brother’s death, he was a comfortable man—but his company had built only 120 airplanes at its Dayton factory and Wright Company products were not in the U.S. arsenal as war continued in Europe.

Edward Roach provides a fascinating window into the legendary Wright Company, its place in Dayton, its management struggles, and its effects on early U.S. aviation.

Fresh from successful flights before royalty in Europe, and soon after thrilling hundreds of thousands of people by flying around the Statue of Liberty, in the fall of 1909 Wilbur and Orville Wright decided the time was right to begin manufacturing their airplanes for sale. Backed by Wall Street tycoons, including August Belmont, Cornelius Vanderbilt III, and Andrew Freedman, the brothers formed the Wright Company. The Wright Company trained hundreds of early aviators at its flight schools, including Roy Brown, the Canadian pilot credited with shooting down Manfred von Richtofen — the “Red Baron”— during the First World War; and Hap Arnold, the commander of the U.S. Army Air Forces during the Second World War. Pilots with the company’s exhibition department thrilled crowds at events from Winnipeg to Boston, Corpus Christi to Colorado Springs. Cal Rodgers flew a Wright Company airplane in pursuit of the $50,000 Hearst Aviation Prize in 1911.

But all was not well in Dayton, a city that hummed with industry, producing cash registers, railroad cars, and many other products. The brothers found it hard to transition from running their own bicycle business to being corporate executives responsible for other people’s money. Their dogged pursuit of enforcement of their 1906 patent — especially against Glenn Curtiss and his company — helped hold back the development of the U.S. aviation industry. When Orville Wright sold the company in 1915, more than three years after his brother’s death, he was a comfortable man — but his company had built only 120 airplanes at its Dayton factory and Wright Company products were not in the U.S. arsenal as war continued in Europe.

Edward Roach provides a fascinating window into the legendary Wright Company, its place in Dayton, its management struggles, and its effects on early U.S. aviation.