Bicycle History

Did you know that in the late nineteenth century, the United States military used bikes to travel from one place to another? They were a new invention and a quicker way to travel than walking. Lieutenant James Moss and twenty soldiers tested the durability of bikes by traveling through six states from the West to the Midwest to prove its usability in the military.

It wasn’t surprising when the first abandoned bicycles were found along the dirt roads and farmland just across the border from Tijuana, but before long they were arriving in droves. The bikes went from curiosity, to nuisance, to phenomenon. But until they caught the eye of journalist Kimball Taylor, only a small cadre of human smugglers - coyotes - and migrants could say how or why they’d gotten there. This is the story of 7,000 bikes that made an incredible journey and one young man from Oaxaca who arrived at the border with nothing, built a small empire, and then vanished.

The bicycle is a vestige of the Victorian era, seemingly out of pace with our age of smartphones and ridesharing apps and driverless cars. Yet we live on a bicycle planet. Across the world, more people travel by bicycle than by any other form of transportation. Almost anyone can learn to ride a bike—and nearly everyone does. In Two Wheels Good, writer and critic Jody Rosen reshapes our understanding of this ubiquitous machine, an ever-present force in humanity's life and dreamlife, and a flashpoint in culture wars for more for than 200 years.

Finally, we can talk about Fight Club! or, A physical and philosophical mediation on why we are drawn to fight each other for sport, what happens to our bodies and brains when we do, and what it all means Anyone with guts or madness in him can get hit by someone who knows how; it takes a...

Random House presents the unabridged downloadable audiobook edition of The Cyclist Who Went Out in the Cold, written and read by Tim Moore. 'Bill Bryson on two wheels' Independent Scaling a new peak of rash over-ambition, Tim Moore tackles the 9,000km route of the old Iron Curtain on a...

In commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of America’s most beloved sporting event—the Super Bowl—an authoritative collection of the most pivotal plays through the decades, compiled by the legendary Jerry Rice, and illustrated with dozens of color photographs. New York Times bestseller...

'The Green Bicycle Mystery' is Jepson's account of a true unsolved murder case. Bella Wright was found lying dead beside her bicycle on a lonely country lane in Leicestershire. She had been shot through the head. The last person seen in her company was a man on a green bicycle. When months later a green bicycle is dredged from a canal, the police are hot on the track of the mystery man.