Biking from Oregon to Maine is no small feat, especially for two newly retired women who carry everything they need for three months, powered only by the strength of their legs and a desire for adventure. Alice Honeywell and Bobbi Montgomery invite readers to follow their ride by bicycle across the United States, as they face scorching sun, driving rain, buffeting winds, equipment failures, killer hills, wild fires, and even a plague of grasshoppers.
    As Alice and Bobbi pedal along  their 3,600-mile journey, they test and deepen their friendship, defy their aches and pains, experience the vast and varied beauties of their country, and discover the challenges and satisfaction of a scaled-down lifestyle. And, they encounter unfailing generosity from people they meet—from the prayers of a North Dakota woman for their safekeeping, to the offer of a house in Michigan, to invitations for dinner and a place to sleep at stops all along the way. And there are incidents to laugh over, too, such as the bewildered woman who asked them, “Well, but where do you pack your dresses?”
    Ride along with Alice and Bobbi as they embrace retirement with gusto and live their dream.

Bicycling Through Paradise is a collection of twenty historically themed cycling tours broken into 10-mile segments centered around Cincinnati, Ohio. Written by two longtime cyclists—one a professor of history and one an architect—the book is an affectionate, intimate, and provocative reading of the local landscape and history from the perspectives of cycling and Cincinnati enthusiasts. Tours, navigated by Smythe and Hanlon, take cyclers past Native American sites, early settler homesteads, and locations made know through recent Ohio change-makers as navigated by the authors. With extensive details on routes and sites along the way, tours between 20 and 80 miles in length are designed for all levels of cyclists, and even the armchair explorer.

Riders and readers will visit towns called Edenton, Loveland, Felicity, and Utopia. Along the journey, they’ll encounter an abandoned Shaker village near the Whitewater Forest and a tiny dairy house called “Harmony Hill,” the oldest standing structure in Clermont County, Ohio. They’ll also take in the view from the top of a 2,000-year-old, 75-foot tall, conical Indian mound at Miamisburg. Riders can follow the Little Miami Scenic Trail and take a detour to a castle on the banks of the Little Miami River. Other sights include a full-scale replica of the tomb of Jesus in Northern Kentucky and the small pleasures of public parks, covered bridges, tree-lined streets, riverside travel, and one-room schoolhouses. And if all this isn’t exactly Paradise, well, it’s pretty close.

The Great Allegheny Passage Trail is a world class biking, hiking, and recreational gateway that stretches nearly 150 miles from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Cumberland, Maryland, where it connects with the C&O Canal Towpath to reach Washington, DC. Showcasing all the natural beauty of the region, this former Indian path, trade route, military road, railway link, and portion of the original National Road is also a journey through American history.
 
The book’s engaging narrative is complemented by the nature photography of Paul g Wiegman and an extensive selection of historical illustrations, all of which reveal the stunning scenery and history of the biking trail. This book captures the essence of the trail as a journey through both time and space, one that evokes all of the heritage and beauty of a region that would grow to prosper and help forge a nation.

Formerly titled An Uncommon Passage: Traveling through History on the Great Allegheny Passage Trail, this is an updated paperback version with a revised introduction and new material that includes the completed trail area in the city of Pittsburgh.

From 1877 to 1896, the popularity of bicycles increased exponentially, and Boston was in on it from the start. The Boston Bicycle Club was the first in the nation, and the city's cyclists formed the nucleus of a new national organization, the League of American Wheelmen. The sport was becoming a craze, and Massachusetts had the largest per capita membership in the league in the 1890s and the largest percentage of women members. Several prominent cycling magazines were published in Boston, making cycling a topic of press coverage and a growing cultural influence as well as a form of recreation.

Lorenz J. Finison explores the remarkable rise of Boston cycling through the lives of several participants, including Kittie Knox, a biracial twenty-year-old seamstress who challenged the color line; Mary Sargent Hopkins, a self-proclaimed expert on women's cycling and publisher of The Wheelwoman; and Abbot Bassett, a longtime secretary of the League of American Wheelman and a vocal cycling advocate for forty years. Finison shows how these riders and others interacted on the road and in their cycling clubhouses, often constrained by issues of race, class, religion, and gender. He reveals the challenges facing these riders, whether cycling for recreation or racing, in a time of segregation, increased immigration, and debates about the rights of women.

At the end of the nineteenth century, cycling's popularity surged in the Boston area, but by 1900, the trend faded. Within the next few decades, automobiles became commonplace and roads were refashioned to serve them. Lorenz J. Finison argues that bicycling witnessed a renaissance in the 1970s as concerns over physical and environmental health coalesced. Whether cyclists hit the roads on their way to work or to work out, went off-road in the mountains or to race via cyclocross and BMX, or took part in charity rides, biking was back in a major way.

Finison traces the city's cycling history, chronicling the activities of environmental and social justice activists, stories of women breaking into male-dominated professions by becoming bike messengers and mechanics, and challenges faced by African American cyclists. Making use of newspaper archives, newly discovered records of local biking organizations, and interviews with Boston-area bicyclists and bike builders, Boston's Twentieth­-Century Bicycling Renaissance brings these voices and battles back to life.

Cycling has experienced a renaissance in the United States, as cities around the country promote the bicycle as an alternative means of transportation. In the process, debates about the nature of bicycles—where they belong, how they should be ridden, how cities should or should not accommodate them—have played out in the media, on city streets, and in city halls. Very few people recognize, however, that these questions are more than a century old.

The Cycling City is a sharp history of the bicycle’s rise and fall in the late nineteenth century. In the 1890s, American cities were home to more cyclists, more cycling infrastructure, more bicycle friendly legislation, and a richer cycling culture than anywhere else in the world.  Evan Friss unearths the hidden history of the cycling city, demonstrating that diverse groups of cyclists managed to remap cities with new roads, paths, and laws, challenge social conventions, and even dream up a new urban ideal inspired by the bicycle. When cities were chaotic and filthy, bicycle advocates imagined an improved landscape in which pollution was negligible, transportation was silent and rapid, leisure spaces were democratic, and the divisions between city and country were blurred. Friss argues that when the utopian vision of a cycling city faded by the turn of the century, its death paved the way for today’s car-centric cities—and ended the prospect of a true American cycling city ever being built.

Every July hundreds of thousands flock to the Champs-Élysées in Paris—and millions more to their televisions and computers—to witness the dramatic conclusion of the grueling three weeks of the Tour de France. There is no better measure of the worldwide love of the bicycle. But of the 1.2 billion cyclists traversing the world’s roadways and trails, few of us take the time to consider the science behind the sport. The simple process of getting about on two wheels brings us in touch with a wealth of fascinating science, and here journalist Max Glaskin investigates the scientific wonders that keep cyclists in their saddles.

 

Cycling Science tours readers through a wide variety of topics, from tire rolling resistance and the difference between yield strength and ultimate strength, to the importance of aerodynamics and the impact that shaved legs have on speed. Each chapter explores a different subject—fundamentals, strength and stability, materials, power, aerodynamics, and the human factor—and is organized around a series of questions: What is the ideal frame shape? What is the biggest source of drag? What keeps a bicycle from falling over? How much power can a cyclist produce? Which muscles does cycling use? Each question is examined with the aid of explanatory diagrams and illustrations, and the book can be used to search for particular topics, or read through for a comprehensive overview of how machine and rider work together.

 

Athletes have much to gain from understanding the science of their sports, and Cycling Science will be a must-read for cyclists of all stripes—professionals, recreational riders, and anyone seeking to enhance their enjoyment of cycling.

Razorback Ridge. Levis Mound. The Underdown. Washburn and Nepco Lake. Whether you’re looking for a snake-like singletrack or a steep descent, whether you want to hit the trails near urban centers or escape to the scenic northern woods and waters, Fat Tire Wisconsin will take you there.

In this updated Second Edition, authors and Wisconsin natives W. Chad McGrath and Mark Parman share the knowledge gained from countless hours of riding Wisconsin’s off-road bike trails. They’ve included twenty-one challenging new trail systems, as well as changes and expansions to older systems. Fat Tire Wisconsin includes details of terrain and levels of difficulty; trail maps, directions to the trail sites, and use fees; and information on organizations, races, and websites.

Worldwide, mountain biking is enjoying ever-increasing popularity. Wisconsin, already a popular and welcoming locale for cycling activities of all kinds, is fast becoming a leader in off-road biking. Fat Tire Wisconsin takes you straight into the heart of everything that off-road Wisconsin has to offer.

Witness the French anthropologist as we have never seen him before. Marc Augé coined the term “non-place” to describe the ubiquitous airports, hotels, and motorways filled with anonymous individuals. In this new book, he casts his anthropologist’s eye on a subject close to his heart: cycling.  With In Praise of the Bicycle, Augé takes us on a two-wheeled ride around our cities and on a personal journey into ourselves. We all remember the thrill of riding a bike for the first time and the joys of cycling. Here he reminds us that these memories are not just personal, but rooted in a time and a place, in a history that is shared with millions of others.

Part memoir, part manifesto, Augé’s book celebrates cycling as a way of reconnecting with the places in which we live, and, ultimately, as a necessary alternative to our disconnected world.

Although millions of people in the United States love to ride bicycles for exercise or leisure, statistics show that only 1% of the total U.S. population ride bicycles for transportation—and barely half as many use bikes to commute to work.  In his original and exciting book, One Less Car, Zack Furness examines what it means historically, culturally, socioeconomically, and politically to be a bicycle transportation advocate/activist.

Presenting an underground subculture of bike enthusiasts who aggressively resist car culture, Furness maps out the cultural trajectories between mobility, technology, urban space and everyday life. He connects bicycling to radical politics, public demonstrations, alternative media production (e.g., ‘zines), as well as to the development of community programs throughout the world.

One Less Car also positions the bicycle as an object with which to analyze and critique some of the dominant cultural and political formations in the U.S.—and even breaks down barriers of race, class and gender privilege that are interconnected to mobility. For Furness, bicycles not only liberate people from technology, they also support social and environmental justice. So, he asks, Why aren’t more Americans adopting them for their transportation needs?

Yellow Livestrong wristbands were taken off across America in early 2013 when Lance Armstrong confessed to Oprah Winfrey that he had doped during the seven Tour de France races he won.  But the foreign cycling world, which always viewed Armstrong with suspicion, had already moved on. The bellwether events of the year were Chris Froome’s victory in the Tour and the ousting of Pat McQuaid as director of the Union Cycliste Internationale. Even without Armstrong, the Tour will roll on— its gigantic entourage includes more than 200 racers, 450 journalists, 260 cameramen, 2,400 support vehicles carrying 4,500 people, and a seven-mile-long publicity caravan. It remains one of the most-watched annual sporting events on television and a global commercial juggernaut.

In Selling the Yellow Jersey, Eric Reed examines the Tour’s development in France as well as the event’s global athletic, cultural, and commercial influences. The race is the crown jewel of French cycling, and at first the newspapers that owned the Tour were loath to open up their monopoly on coverage to state-owned television. However, the opportunity for huge payoffs prevailed, and France tapped into global networks of spectatorship, media, business, athletes, and exchanges of expertise and personnel. In the process, the Tour helped endow world cycling with a particularly French character, culture, and structure, while providing proof that globalization was not merely a form of Americanization, imposed on a victimized world. Selling the Yellow Jersey explores the behind-the-scenes growth of the Tour, while simultaneously chronicling France’s role as a dynamic force in the global arena.

Chock-full of informative detail,
Trails of Central Arkansas delivers:
 
*  Sixty trails in 36 parks or locations from Benton and Bryant to Cabot, from Wrightsville to Conway
*  Color maps of every trail
*  GPS coordinates for every trailhead
*  Color-coded distinctions between paved and unpaved trails
*  Level of difficulty ratings
*  Scenery Scores
*  Top-ten lists: Most Scenic, Trails for Kids, and Trails for Solitude

When blacksmith Pierre Michaux affixed pedals to the front axle of a two-wheeled scooter with a seat, he helped kick off a craze known as velocipedomania, which swept France in the late 1860s. The immediate forerunner of the bicycle, the velocipede similarly reflected changing cultural attitudes and challenged gender norms. 
 
Velocipedomania is the first in-depth study of the velocipede fad and the popular culture it inspired. It explores how the device was hailed as a symbol of France’s cutting-edge technological advancements, yet also marketed as an invention with a noble pedigree, born from the nation’s cultural and literary heritage. Giving readers a window into the material culture and enthusiasms of Second Empire France, it provides the first English translations of 1869’s Manual of the Velocipede, 1868’s Note on Monsieur Michaux’s Velocipede, and the 1869 operetta Dagobert and his Velocipede. It also reprints scores of rare images from newspapers and advertisements, analyzing how these magnificent machines captured the era’s visual imagination. By looking at how it influenced French attitudes towards politics, national identity, technology, fashion, fitness, and gender roles, this book shows how the short-lived craze of velocipedomania had a big impact. 

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.