Sports & Outdoors
Individual Sports
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Two Wheels Good: The History and Mystery of the Bicycle
NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE • 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 Pain
The 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.
"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 Pain
The 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.
Editorial Reviews
"Excellent. . . . Two Wheels Good takes the form of bricolage, blending meticulous historical research, local reporting from bicycle-dependent locales like Bhutan and Bangladesh and personal memories . . . . The book excels across all of them and, in its curious, mingled character, calls to mind Bill Bryson, John McPhee, Rebecca Solnit-obsessives, for whom the material world and their own infinitesimal presence within it constitute the most natural subject of artistic inquiry."-The New York Times Book Review
"Comprehensive . . . [Two Wheels Good] often feels like a leisurely ride, full of spontaneous detours into unexpected delight. But what makes the book essential is its rigorous reporting."-The Atlantic
"[A] complex cultural history. . . . The strength of Two Wheels Good is the journalist's eye [Rosen] brings to a basic technology that has had radically disparate identities at different times and in different parts of the world."-Curbed
"A lively biography of a tool central to the greening of urban spaces. It's also a fascinating, sweeping everyday explainer, moving from the bike's 19th-century origins to its importance globally."-Chicago Tribune
"Encyclopedic. . . . A deeply researched and vastly entertaining history of the bicycle."-Dallas Morning News
"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-offering not just a wry, rich, deeply researched meditation on the bicycle and our relationship to it, but also the headlong rush of cruising on two wheels into the unknown."-Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Empire of Pain
"When I fell in love with riding a bike in New York City, what I found myself craving was a history. But I'm greedy: I wished that whoever wrote this history would find a way to make it personal and ruminative, to bring cities and eras to life. Jody Rosen has written that very book. I got more than I knew I wanted."-Wesley Morris, Pulitzer Prize–winning critic,
"Comprehensive . . . [Two Wheels Good] often feels like a leisurely ride, full of spontaneous detours into unexpected delight. But what makes the book essential is its rigorous reporting."-The Atlantic
"[A] complex cultural history. . . . The strength of Two Wheels Good is the journalist's eye [Rosen] brings to a basic technology that has had radically disparate identities at different times and in different parts of the world."-Curbed
"A lively biography of a tool central to the greening of urban spaces. It's also a fascinating, sweeping everyday explainer, moving from the bike's 19th-century origins to its importance globally."-Chicago Tribune
"Encyclopedic. . . . A deeply researched and vastly entertaining history of the bicycle."-Dallas Morning News
"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-offering not just a wry, rich, deeply researched meditation on the bicycle and our relationship to it, but also the headlong rush of cruising on two wheels into the unknown."-Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Empire of Pain
"When I fell in love with riding a bike in New York City, what I found myself craving was a history. But I'm greedy: I wished that whoever wrote this history would find a way to make it personal and ruminative, to bring cities and eras to life. Jody Rosen has written that very book. I got more than I knew I wanted."-Wesley Morris, Pulitzer Prize–winning critic,
Readers Top Reviews
alanJohn McDermot
Only because our book club had selected the title, did I continue to struggle through an otherwise boring piece of literature. The book wandered away from its subject matter by exploring the lives of a few otherwise unknown cyclists. These explorations were actually more interesting than the coverage of the title but again, with choice, I would not have read these portions either.
AJP arizonaalan
Reasonably well written and comprehensive, though it's not one of those rare and inspiring works. Nice read for the summer, or maybe the spring before the riding season.
A MSebastian Agud
The author is a journalist, and the book includes mainly various stories one may expect to read in a journal. Only a few pages are devoted to the history of the bicycle's invention, and there is almost no technical discussion. For example, there is no discussion about the interesting question of why the bicycle is stable.
RTMA MSebastian A
Writer Jody Rosen gives readers a fascinating journey into the history of the bicycle, as well as stories about the importance of (and controversies involving) cycling in a variety of countries. As a lifelong cyclist, and someone who has read numerous books about this subject, I can say with confidence that "Two Wheels Good" offers original perspectives, with quite a bit of information new to me. The author travels far and wide to investigate cycling stories, including a trip to Bhutan, home to perhaps the world's most challenging one day bike race. Rosen also visits Bangladesh, the UK, and describes his cycling experiences in NYC. If this sounds like a confusing hodgepodge, I did find it distracting that Rosen often jumps from one topic to another, as if each chapter is a separate article or essay. However, I found the unifying themes of this book to be: 1) The disruptive role bikes and cyclists have often played in various cultures over time; 2) The fierce determination of cyclists since the invention of the bicycle to pursue their passion, dreams, and sometimes simply the utilitarian desire to get from one place to another as efficiently as possible; 3) The impact of cyclists on urban design and the experience of urban living. Overall, I enjoyed this book, and recommend it to anyone interested in cycling.
CRTMA MSebastian
This book has 15 main chapters, and about 333 pages, not including the Acknowledgments. In the Prologue Rosen describes the almost mystical history of the bicycle; as he covers its early associations with flight, mythology and space travel. There is a picture of an old 1900 ad that depicts a bicycle soaring above Greek goddesses in outer space, and Rosen explains that this type of marketing was common in that era. This section also includes a few interesting stories; like how the Wright brothers used their experience working with bikes to help design their aircraft, or the logic behind Dunlop's 1888 tire improvement idea. Over the first few chapters, Rosen goes into the history of the development and adoption of the bicycle. From the early “Laufmaschine” developed by Karl von Drais, all the way up to modern bicycles; Rosen covers the major developments and hurdles/resistance in the story of the bicycle. One particular amusing section is in Chapter 5 – Bicycle Mania; where Rosen reprints accounts from the 1890s of various marriages that ended in divorce due to (mostly women) being “obsessed” with this new bicycle craze and causing irreconcilable differences; or other stories of how bicycle mania had “ruined” the current culture. Rosen covers many other interesting stories, fads, and cultural reactions throughout the rest of the book. Chapter 10 covers stationary bicycles, while Chapter 13 documents Rosen's personal journey with bikes. Overall I enjoyed reading this surprising history lesson about everything related to bicycles. This is part history book, part collection of amusing stories, and even part memoir. Personally I am very interested in modern bicycles and love riding when I can, so I might be a little biased in how much I liked this book. If you are interested in bike history and funny stories though, I would have to recommend this one.
Short Excerpt Teaser
1
The Bicycle Window
St. Giles' is a small parish church that sits on a patch of pleasantly shaded land in the village of Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, twenty-five miles west of London. There has been a house of worship on this site since Saxon times. The oldest part of the church building, its rough-hewn stone tower, dates from the period of the Norman Conquest.
The place is also holy ground for literati of a certain age and inclination. It was at St. Giles', in 1742, that Thomas Gray conceived "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," a meditation on death and bereavement that was once among the most celebrated poems in the English language, a fixture of syllabi until tastes swung to less orotund verse. Today, Gray himself is in the churchyard, in a grave marked by an altar-shaped tombstone that sits just outside a chapel window on the building's east façade. St. Giles' is a lovely place, tranquil and picturesque, an ideal spot for a rest-eternal or merely momentary. If you find yourself there on a mild evening, you will take in a setting little different from the one immortalized by Gray:
Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds.
My visit to St. Giles' came in the spring, on a day of warm breezes and pouring sunshine. The panorama-church, churchyard greenery, surrounding countryside-was unreasonably pretty, and as I strolled the long path that snakes through St. Giles' grounds, the birds were singing so wildly that I punched up the Voice Memos app on my iPhone and made a recording. Looming about one hundred yards to the south of the church was the Manor House, a sixteenth-century estate once owned by Queen Elizabeth I, and later by Sir Thomas Penn, the son of William Penn, Pennsylvania's founder. For an American who had spent little time in the leafy home counties but many hours reading nineteenth-century novels and watching costume-drama adaptations of those novels, the scenery was exotic but familiar. I half-expected to see Dame Maggie Smith bustling out of the church in period dress.
The person who materialized instead was St. Giles' minister, Reverend Harry Latham. With a couple of adjustments to his wardrobe, Latham himself might have stepped from the pages of Jane Austen. He was the picture of the handsome country vicar. He was perhaps forty-five years old, but he had the unlined face and full hairline of a younger man. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and a pin-striped shirt with a clerical collar. There was a faint musical lilt when he spoke, and his manner was soothing. Latham has a second pulpit about a mile up the road at St. Giles' sister church, St. Andrew's, where the congregation is younger and the services more informal, with sermons augmented by guitars and drums and sing-alongs. It is easy to picture Latham in either role: intoning the Beatitudes beneath St. Giles' medieval vaults or strumming an acoustic on the altar at St. Andrew's, his feet tapping along in open-toed sandals.
I had phoned a few months earlier to arrange a meeting, and followed up with emails, including one on the evening before my arrival. But as I faced Latham that afternoon in the churchyard, it was apparent that he had no idea who I was or what I could be doing there. I watched him take me in, cap to sneakers, registering the facts of the case: I was a stranger, my accent was American, I was clearly seeking neither pastoral care nor communion with the ghost of Thomas Gray. He came to the obvious conclusion. "You're looking for the bicycle window," Latham said.
______
The bicycle is a definitively nineteenth-century thing. It was the product of hard science and machine age engineering, of mass production and global trade. It was a creation of Victorian commercial culture, blown up big and spread wide by billboards and newspaper advertisements and popular songs. The bicycle stood for modernity and for modernism. "Lady Progress" was the mascot of the first periodical devoted to cycling, Le vélocipède illustré, published in Paris beginning in 1869. Drawings that appeared above the magazine's masthead depicted a female cyclist in a heroic pose, leaving dust in her wake as she streamed forward on two wheels, clutching a banner, with a headlamp lighting the way. The image winked at Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People while linking the bicycle to the hallmarks of changing times: women's liberation, new technology, speed, freedom. Decades later, Picasso, Duchamp, and other artists and writers still enshrined the bicycle as an emblem of the avant-garde.
Yet a crucial truth about the bicycle, as a historica...
The Bicycle Window
St. Giles' is a small parish church that sits on a patch of pleasantly shaded land in the village of Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, twenty-five miles west of London. There has been a house of worship on this site since Saxon times. The oldest part of the church building, its rough-hewn stone tower, dates from the period of the Norman Conquest.
The place is also holy ground for literati of a certain age and inclination. It was at St. Giles', in 1742, that Thomas Gray conceived "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," a meditation on death and bereavement that was once among the most celebrated poems in the English language, a fixture of syllabi until tastes swung to less orotund verse. Today, Gray himself is in the churchyard, in a grave marked by an altar-shaped tombstone that sits just outside a chapel window on the building's east façade. St. Giles' is a lovely place, tranquil and picturesque, an ideal spot for a rest-eternal or merely momentary. If you find yourself there on a mild evening, you will take in a setting little different from the one immortalized by Gray:
Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds.
My visit to St. Giles' came in the spring, on a day of warm breezes and pouring sunshine. The panorama-church, churchyard greenery, surrounding countryside-was unreasonably pretty, and as I strolled the long path that snakes through St. Giles' grounds, the birds were singing so wildly that I punched up the Voice Memos app on my iPhone and made a recording. Looming about one hundred yards to the south of the church was the Manor House, a sixteenth-century estate once owned by Queen Elizabeth I, and later by Sir Thomas Penn, the son of William Penn, Pennsylvania's founder. For an American who had spent little time in the leafy home counties but many hours reading nineteenth-century novels and watching costume-drama adaptations of those novels, the scenery was exotic but familiar. I half-expected to see Dame Maggie Smith bustling out of the church in period dress.
The person who materialized instead was St. Giles' minister, Reverend Harry Latham. With a couple of adjustments to his wardrobe, Latham himself might have stepped from the pages of Jane Austen. He was the picture of the handsome country vicar. He was perhaps forty-five years old, but he had the unlined face and full hairline of a younger man. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and a pin-striped shirt with a clerical collar. There was a faint musical lilt when he spoke, and his manner was soothing. Latham has a second pulpit about a mile up the road at St. Giles' sister church, St. Andrew's, where the congregation is younger and the services more informal, with sermons augmented by guitars and drums and sing-alongs. It is easy to picture Latham in either role: intoning the Beatitudes beneath St. Giles' medieval vaults or strumming an acoustic on the altar at St. Andrew's, his feet tapping along in open-toed sandals.
I had phoned a few months earlier to arrange a meeting, and followed up with emails, including one on the evening before my arrival. But as I faced Latham that afternoon in the churchyard, it was apparent that he had no idea who I was or what I could be doing there. I watched him take me in, cap to sneakers, registering the facts of the case: I was a stranger, my accent was American, I was clearly seeking neither pastoral care nor communion with the ghost of Thomas Gray. He came to the obvious conclusion. "You're looking for the bicycle window," Latham said.
______
The bicycle is a definitively nineteenth-century thing. It was the product of hard science and machine age engineering, of mass production and global trade. It was a creation of Victorian commercial culture, blown up big and spread wide by billboards and newspaper advertisements and popular songs. The bicycle stood for modernity and for modernism. "Lady Progress" was the mascot of the first periodical devoted to cycling, Le vélocipède illustré, published in Paris beginning in 1869. Drawings that appeared above the magazine's masthead depicted a female cyclist in a heroic pose, leaving dust in her wake as she streamed forward on two wheels, clutching a banner, with a headlamp lighting the way. The image winked at Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People while linking the bicycle to the hallmarks of changing times: women's liberation, new technology, speed, freedom. Decades later, Picasso, Duchamp, and other artists and writers still enshrined the bicycle as an emblem of the avant-garde.
Yet a crucial truth about the bicycle, as a historica...
