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When it comes to bike books, there’s few genres out there that can prove a greater source of inspiration or tell more fascinating tales. Here are our five picks for the best in the business right now:
Bike Nation: How Cycling Can Save the World (Peter Walker)
In this book, Guardian news correspondent, Peter Walker, takes us across the globe to explore the many different attitudes to cycling on our highways.
He takes in the flag-bearers of Amsterdam and Copenhagen, where the number bikes outweighs the number of people, and looks at how each of these two cities have embedded cycling into their culture, the provision provided and the benefits on offer.
Then, Walker heads take to the more patchy offerings in Britain, America and Australia, where cycling provision can still be deeply lacking in some areas, and looks at the mistakes in planning and development, and how they can aggravate the community of cyclists.
Walker’s forensic analysis of cycling around the world, will supply you with all the knowledge you need to take your and your bike’s place on the road. You can listen to him talking about the book below:
- Walker, Peter (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 272 Pages - 04/06/2017 (Publication Date) - Yellow Jersey (Publisher)
It’s All About the Bike: The Pursuit of Happiness on Two Wheels (Robert Penn)
Written by a man who has rode a bike all of his life, Robert Penn tells the tale of how he became so enamoured with cycling, from the daily commute to the simple pleasure of riding through the sunshine and the sense of freedom he garners.
He also tells of his journey to construct a dream bike; from Californian mountain bike inventors to British artisan frame builders, and from perfect components to find his own perfect model. Described as ‘a gem of a book’ by the Economist and ‘infectious, exhilarating, [and] highly engaging’ by the Independent, these are just some of its countless glowing reviews.
- Amazon Kindle Edition
- Penn, Robert (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
Back In The Frame: How To Get Back On Your Bike, Whatever Life Throws At You (Jools Walker)
After a decade of staying away, author Jools Walker fell back in love with cycling at the age of 28 and began blogging about her adventures under the pseudonym ‘Lady Vélo’. But it’s difficult to tackle an industry not typically commonplace for women; especially women of colour.
Soon after getting back on her saddle, Jools was diagnosed with depression and then suffered a small stroke in his early thirties. Yet despite all of these challenges, her love of cycling never wavered.
Here, Jools talks to the other prominent female cyclists and tells her own story of overcoming her health problems, how she found her own path in cycling and even a love for Lycra shorts in the meantime.
- Walker, Jools (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 368 Pages - 05/23/2019 (Publication Date) - Sphere (Publisher)
Bike Boom: The Unexpected Resurgence of Cycling (Carlton Reid)
With cycling commuters ever-increasing in number across the globe, Carlton Reid considers whether we will ever true see another ‘bike boom’ in cities, and what we can learn from the past about how to make cycling safer, easier, more accessible and more popular.
Reid explores both cycling’s challenges and benefits, the crucial role that infrastructure plays in causing it to grow in popularity, and how the US and UK could perhaps follow the example set by the Netherlands, as they maybe should have done during the first global cycling ‘boom’ in the 1970s.
- Amazon Kindle Edition
- Reid, Carlton (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
The Cyclist Who Went Out in the Cold: Adventures Along the Iron Curtain Trail (Tim Moore)
Author Tim Moore travels the length 9,000km Iron Curtain route on a minuscule, East German MIFA 900 shopping bike with only two gears during the height of the Arctic winter through freezing Finland.
Described by The Independent as ‘Bill Bryson on wheels’, Moore also looks back at the rise and fall of Communism, and memories of the generation who grew up during the Cold War, before arriving three months and 20 countries late to a Black Sea beach in Bulgaria.
- Amazon Kindle Edition
- Moore, Tim (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
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