A Wheel Within a Wheel (ISBN 1594628084)

A true gem:
Frances Willard was a hardy, clear-spoken New England Temperance/Suffrage activist of the late 19th century. Until age 16, she had free run of the world, but then was bound by the corsets and hoops and restrictions of womanhood. That is, until she turned 53 and received the gift of "a wheel" -- a safety bicycle -- from a friend in the movement. Her reflections on riding the bicycle are amusing and profound. It was very much a community effort for her; she describes one lesson in which four friends stand at the corners (including one at each side of the handlebars, counterbalancing them) and walk her down the drive. BUT this book is ultimately more about life than it is about cycling. It is like a journal of all the insights sparked by this return to the unfettered freedom of Willard's youth. And for that, it is precious and challenging. The language reminded me of Mark Twain's dry observations on his own habits and predilections, and Willard is certainly his equal in exercising her powers of observation and analysis. Ultimately she reflects a universal experience: the experience of flight on two wheels that attracts so many of us to the sport and discipline of the bicycle.

The Golden Age of the Bicycle:
In Europe and the United States there was a brief period that roughly spanned the 1890s. During that period, people of all ages began abandoning one troublesome, expensive and polluting form of tranportation, the horse, without adopting the automobile, which was at least as troublesome, expensive and polluting. That was the Golden Age of the Bicycle. If I were given the power to rewrite history, I'd be tempted to delay the invention of the car long enough, perhaps twenty years, to give our cities, our neighborhoods and our societies a chance to establish themselves around the bicycle, before I would allow the automobile to come along. Unfortunately, I can't do that. But I can recommend books from this golden age to bicycle lovers so they can get a glimpse of what might have been. This book, Wheel Within a Wheel is one. But be sure to check out Around the World on a Bicycle, the story of the first person to circle the world on a bicycle, as well as Across Asia on a Bicycle, which describes the Asian leg of the second circumnavigation of the world by bicycle and the first using the modern 'safety' bike.