Two Wheels Good: The History and Mystery of the Bicycle
History, Lifestyle, General non-fiction
Synthetic audio, Automated braille
Summary
A panoramic revisionist portrait of the nineteenth-century invention that is transforming the twenty-first-century world&“The real feat of this book is that it takes us on a ride—across the centuries and around the globe, through startling history and vivid first-person reporting.&”—Patrick… Radden Keefe, New York Times bestselling author of Empire of PainThe bicycle is a vestige of the Victorian era, seemingly at odds with our age of smartphones and ride-sharing apps and driverless cars. Yet we live on a bicycle planet. Across the world, more people travel by bicycle than any other form of transportation. Almost anyone can learn to ride a bike—and nearly everyone does.In Two Wheels Good, journalist and critic Jody Rosen reshapes our understanding of this ubiquitous machine, an ever-present force in humanity&’s life and dream life—and a flash point in culture wars—for more than two hundred years. Combining history, reportage, travelogue, and memoir, Rosen&’s book sweeps across centuries and around the globe, unfolding the bicycle&’s saga from its invention in 1817 to its present-day renaissance as a &“green machine,&” an emblem of sustainability in a world afflicted by pandemic and climate change. Readers meet unforgettable characters: feminist rebels who steered bikes to the barricades in the 1890s, a prospector who pedaled across the frozen Yukon to join the Klondike gold rush, a Bhutanese king who races mountain bikes in the Himalayas, a cycle-rickshaw driver who navigates the seething streets of the world&’s fastest-growing megacity, astronauts who ride a floating bicycle in zero gravity aboard the International Space Station.Two Wheels Good examines the bicycle&’s past and peers into its future, challenging myths and clichés while uncovering cycling&’s connection to colonial conquest and the gentrification of cities. But the book is also a love letter: a reflection on the sensual and spiritual pleasures of bike riding and an ode to an engineering marvel—a wondrous vehicle whose passenger is also its engine.