Archive for the “Books (Bicycle History)” Category
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“Kings of the Mountains” tells the amazing and little-known story of how an impoverished, politically turbulent Latin American country produced a breed of cyclist capable of taking on the world’s best – in the 2002 Tour de France the top Colombian rider Santiago Botero beat even the great Lance Armstrong to win the time trial. Matt Rendell tells of how Colombia’s fist cycle races during the 50s were held on dusty, unpaved roads – with consequentially ghastly accidents; of how the first top Europeans to race in Colombia found themselves utterly vanquished by its endless mountain climbs; of how the biography of Colombia’s first cycling superstar was written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Then, in the 70s and 80s, its cyclists began to make their mark abroad, even in the Tour de France – especially as victors in its draining mountain stages, to become King of the Mountains – before Colombia’s pathological political instability led to the rise of the cocaine cartels, and cycling became inextricably linked with the world of drug smuggling.
Kings of the Mountains: How Colombia’s Cycling Heroes Changed Their Nation’s History
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Posted by Blogmaster in Books (Bicycle History), tags: 1888, 1897, Bicycle, Company, Methodist, Municipal, Reform, Revenge, Streetcars, Sunday, Toronto
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Bribery! Corruption! Fist fights on the steps of City Hall. Thunderings from the pulpits! Mass meetings, petitions, rallies, unrest in the streets! The Revenge of the Methodist Bicycle Company is a lighthearted, impeccably researched excursion through the thickets of chicanery, hypocrisy and sanctimony that were the special marks of High Victorian Toronto.
The story is simple: big-money interest who owned Toronto’s street railways wanted to run streetcars on Sundays. They claimed this would be a boon to the working man on his day of rest, but it was clear that profit was their real motive. Respectable leaders of Toronto society were adamantly opposed; Sunday streetcars were a desecration of the Sabbath, the work of the Devil. But ultimately, the robber barons won and the cars ran on Sunday-just as the first great bicycle craze began. Everybody bought bikes-some of them from the Methodist Bicycle Company-and the Sunday streetcars were virtually empty.
Revenge is a rollicking good story peopled by flamboyant characters with Good and Evil fighting it out in public view. Richly illustrated with cartoons and photographs from the period, it is an exuberant refutation of the notion that Canadian history is dull.
With a new introduction by the authors, the attractive Wynford edition brings this award-winning classic to a new generation of readers.
The Revenge of the Methodist Bicycle Company: Sunday Streetcars and Municipal Reform in Toronto, 1888 – 1897
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Take a lively look at women’s history from aboard a bicycle, which granted females the freedom of mobility and helped empower women’s liberation. Through vintage photographs, advertisements, cartoons, and songs, Wheels of Change transports young readers to bygone eras to see how women used the bicycle to improve their lives. Witty in tone and scrapbook-like in presentation, the book deftly covers early (and comical) objections, influence on fashion, and impact on social change inspired by the bicycle, which, according to Susan B. Anthony, “has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.”Amazon.com Review
Take a lively look at women’s history from aboard a bicycle, which granted females the freedom of mobility and helped empower women’s liberation. Through vintage photographs, advertisements, cartoons, and songs, Wheels of Change transports young readers to bygone eras to see how women used the bicycle to improve their lives. Witty in tone and scrapbook-like in presentation, the book deftly covers early (and comical) objections, influence on fashion, and impact on social change inspired by the bicycle, which, according to Susan B. Anthony, “has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.”
Q&A with Sue Macy, Author of Wheels of Change
Q: Who taught you how to ride a bike? What did it feel like when you took your first one for a spin?
A: My dad taught me how to ride a two-wheeler. (He later taught me to drive a car.) I remember him taking me to a paved, pretty empty parking lot at a nearby park. It was a great feeling to be able to move and balance without training wheels, but I was also worried about falling. I don’t think I did fall, though.
Q: Why are bikes still important to women?
A: I think that Leah Missbach Day does a great job in the foreword to Wheels of Change of explaining how bicycles are still important to one population of women–those in developing countries who are able to increase their mobility astronomically with the bicycles they received through World Bicycle Relief. But today in the U.S., bicycles are important to everybody. They allow people to do errands without using fossil fuels, to get great cardiovascular exercise, to see their surroundings in a whole new way. My neighborhood isn’t great for cycling–too much traffic and too many hills–but I try to ride at least once a week in the spring, summer, and fall, usually stopping at a nearby farmers’ market to restock on fruits and vegetables. It’s a healthy way to live.
Q: What’s your favorite thing about the very first bicycle models?
A: I love the ordinaries, which weren’t the first models but rather the ones that started appearing in the 1870s, with the very large front wheel and the smaller real wheel. I love the look of them; they’re such a wonderful evocation of a time in history. When you see one, you’re automatically transported back to that time period; but I wouldn’t want to ride one. When I was visiting Dottie Batho, who contributed more than 20 images to Wheels of Change, I tried to hoist myself onto the seat of the ordinary that she has in her living room and I was scared to do even that. It was her late husband’s bike and she said the first time he rode it, he fell head first over the front wheel and broke both his wrists!
Q: How is the bicycle going to change the future?
A: I really do think more and more people will go back to the bicycle as a replacement for cars and other types of local transportation and hopefully, towns and cities will start designating more space for cyclists to ride. The efforts of the Portland, Oregon, city government to make bicycling an integral part of daily life have been well-publicized, but even New York City has been installing 50 miles of bike lanes per year with the goal of having an 1,800-mile network of bike lanes by 2030. Cycling is a great way to get around and a great way to keep healthy.
Q: What are kids going to love most about this book?
A: Wheels of Change is a lively book full of awesome characters and its design is very appealing. I love the stories of the bicycle racers, most of whom had been lost to history until now. Their bravura and tenacity was pretty amazing. I think kids also will love the images–especially the bicycle artifacts from the 1800s–because they will help kids visual what the period was all about. Plus, there are news clips about female cyclists in every chapter, reproduced verbatim, and some of them are wild. My favorite is “Don’ts for Women Wheelers” on page 38.
Q: How has fashion evolved around the bicycle? Do you think dresses and high heels impede a woman’s ability to feel completely free?
A: The advent of the bicycles in the late 1800s caused a fashion revolution for women because it made the need for comfortable, safe clothing for cyclists crucial. And once women started casting aside corsets and other oppressive fashion architecture, they realized there was much to be said for simpler clothing. I completely understand this evolution because, as a writer who works from home, I go for comfort over fashion most of the time. High heels are great for elongating one’s legs, but they’re a pain when it comes to moving freely or quickly!
Wheels of Change: How Women Rode the Bicycle to Freedom
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This book is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS series. The creators of this series are united by passion for literature and driven by the intention of making all public domain books available in printed format again – worldwide. At tredition we believe that a great book never goes out of style. Several mostly non-profit literature projects provide content to tredition. To support their good work, tredition donates a portion of the proceeds from each sold copy. As a reader of a TREDITION CLASSICS book, you support our mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion.
Around the World on a Bicycle: Volume 1 From San Francisco to Teheran
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Cycling was a sport so important in Italy that it marked a generation, sparked fears of civil war, changed the way Italian was spoken, led to legal reform and even prompted the Pope himself to praise a cyclist, by name, from his balcony in St Peter’s in Rome. It was a sport so popular that it created the geography of Italy in the minds of her citizens, and some have said that it was cycling, not political change, that united Italy. Pedalare! Pedalare! is the first complete history of Italian cycling to be published in English. The book moves chronologically from the first Giro d’Italia (Italy’s equivalent of the Tour de France) in 1909 to the present day. The tragedies and triumphs of great riders such as Fausto Coppi and Gino Bartali appear alongside stories of the support riders, snow-bound mountains and the first and only woman to ride the whole Giro. Cycling’s relationship with Italian history, politics and culture is always up front, with reference to fascism, the cold war and the effect of two world wars. The sport is explored alongside changes in Italian society as a whole, from the poor peasants who took up cycling in the early, pioneering period, to the slick, professional sport of today. Scandals and controversy appear throughout the book as constant features of the connection between fans, journalists and cycling. Concluding with an examination of doping, which has helped to destroy what was at one time the most popular sport of all, Pedalare, Pedalare is an engrossing history of a national passion.
Pedalare! Pedalare! A History of Italian Cycling
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Catherine the Great owned a pearl necklace containing 389 pearls and weighing nearly 10 pounds, almost as heavy as the curse it carried for its owners. It was worth a million dollars when it disappeared at the beginning of the 20th century, only to resurface in the hands of the Dodge family. Then the two Dodge brothers, John and Horace, died within a year of each other. John was 55, Horace only 52. Their premature deaths in 1920, attributable to the worldwide influenza pandemic of 1918, ended one of the first chapters of American automotive history, but the Dodge name remains alive and well. They were different, unwilling or incapable of conforming to social expectations, but they were visionaries and indefatigable workers who helped Henry Ford build his company before starting their own. The Dodge story is a story of great wealth, yachts, entrepreneurship at its best, and a true American saga of two of the early 20th century’s giant industrialists. [1,753-word Titans of Fortune article]Product Description
Catherine the Great owned a pearl necklace containing 389 pearls and weighing nearly 10 pounds, almost as heavy as the curse it carried for its owners. It was worth a million dollars when it disappeared at the beginning of the 20th century, only to resurface in the hands of the Dodge family. Then the two Dodge brothers, John and Horace, died within a year of each other. John was 55, Horace only 52. Their premature deaths in 1920, attributable to the worldwide influenza pandemic of 1918, ended one of the first chapters of American automotive history, but the Dodge name remains alive and well. They were different, unwilling or incapable of conforming to social expectations, but they were visionaries and indefatigable workers who helped Henry Ford build his company before starting their own. The Dodge story is a story of great wealth, yachts, entrepreneurship at its best, and a true American saga of two of the early 20th century’s giant industrialists. [1,753-word Titans of Fortune article]
John and Horace Dodge: Automotive Pioneers
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The Bicycle and the Bush looks at the bicycle’s use in rural Australia from 1890-1920. It is one of the most unusual, innovative explorations ever undertaken into the role of a transport device and its relationship with a society and its environment. This book surveys the machine’s introduction, manufacturing, sales and distribution in Australia, and its broader social impact upon urban society, women, the Australian language, and racing, among other things.
Australia is the size of the continental United States. In 1890, beyond the few inland towns of note, it was mostly the province of sparsely distributed agriculturalists, pastoralists, miners, and keepers of isolated telegraph stations and government outposts. There was a need for travel between the widely spaced settlements and isolated homesteads, and the distances travelled were large by world standards; in few other countries did people move so far as part of their regular work routines.
The machine’s use ranged from rabbit fence patrols and telegraph line repairmen, to nearly all shearers being mounted on them for nearly 2 decades. On the Western Australian goldfields, in particular (an area the size of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah combined), the remoteness of early settlements led to the most unusual and extensive network of bicycle paths in the world at that time, based upon camel tracks used to supply mining settlements.Product Description
The Bicycle and the Bush looks at the bicycle’s use in rural Australia from 1890-1920. It is one of the most unusual, innovative explorations ever undertaken into the role of a transport device and its relationship with a society and its environment. This book surveys the machine’s introduction, manufacturing, sales and distribution in Australia, and its broader social impact upon urban society, women, the Australian language, and racing, among other things.
Australia is the size of the continental United States. In 1890, beyond the few inland towns of note, it was mostly the province of sparsely distributed agriculturalists, pastoralists, miners, and keepers of isolated telegraph stations and government outposts. There was a need for travel between the widely spaced settlements and isolated homesteads, and the distances travelled were large by world standards; in few other countries did people move so far as part of their regular work routines.
The machine’s use ranged from rabbit fence patrols and telegraph line repairmen, to nearly all shearers being mounted on them for nearly 2 decades. On the Western Australian goldfields, in particular (an area the size of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah combined), the remoteness of early settlements led to the most unusual and extensive network of bicycle paths in the world at that time, based upon camel tracks used to supply mining settlements.
The Bicycle and the Bush: Man and Machine in Rural Australia
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This late-19th-century volume on the science and mechanics of the bicycle remains unsurpassed in its thorough, accurate, technical coverage of the subject. More than 560 illustrations, diagrams, figures, and tables complement an exhaustive examination of such topics as the development of cycles, kinematics, stability, steering, the frame, gears, stresses, and mechanical components.
Bicycles & Tricycles: A Classic Treatise on Their Design and Construction
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This is a guide to Australia’s most popular bicycle touring areas, featuring long and short tours in all regions of the country, two-colour route maps and route descriptions.
Cycling Australia : Bicycle Touring Throughout the Sunny Continent
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