Two Wheels Good

Starred review from April 4, 2022
This high-flying debut history by New York Times Magazine contributor Rosen captures the allure of riding a bike. Through vivid anecdotes, such as how the design of the bicycle led the Wright brothers to invent the airplane, Rosen makes clear how impactful the invention has been for humankind. Baron Karl von Drais, a minor German nobleman, produced the first bike in 1817, and the design was repeatedly improved upon in subsequent decades. For example, in 1888, Belfast-based veterinarian John Boyd Dunlop replaced the solid rubber tires on his son’s tricycle with “inflated rubber tubes, sheathed in canvas and an additional outer layer of sheet rubber,” leading to the widespread adoption of pneumatic tires. Rosen is equally fascinating in describing the bicycle’s changing status in countries like China, which produces more bikes per year than the world builds cars; the “Great Covid-19 Bicycle Boom” that saw people “converging on bike lanes and patronizing cycle-share systems in unprecedented numbers”; and the archetype of “bright-eyed children, bicycling through idyllic suburbs” seen in movies and TV shows like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Stranger Things. Witty prose, exhaustive research, and Rosen’s contagious enthusiasm ensure that this standout history will appeal to cyclists and non-cyclists alike.

April 15, 2022
Rosen offers an intriguing and somewhat offbeat exploration of bicycles from the Victorian era to the present. A passionate advocate of bike riding, Rosen combines his personal experiences on a bike with a wide-ranging account of bicycle history that rambles through bicycle innovations and design; the impact of bikes on the women's rights movement; the contentious bicycle-versus-horse debate; military bicycles used in the Boer War; and, in the present, bikes as a vehicle of protest during Black Lives Matter demonstrations. Fascinating stories are found throughout, including an ode to the stationary exercise bicycles (and their last riders) on the Titanic; a salute to fortune seekers heading to the Yukon gold rush astride Klondike bicycles; and a nod to Danny MacAskill, "the most famous stunt cyclist in history." There's even a chapter about what Rosen calls ""bike sexuality,"" which embraces subcultures like Bike Smut and Bikesexual. This wildly eclectic cornucopia offers a love letter to bicycles and is sure to be savored by their enthusiasts everywhere.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from May 1, 2022
A lively social history of the bicycle. As New York Times Magazine feature writer Rosen observes in this good-natured narrative, the bicycle has always been viewed through a complex moral lens. In China, where "the number of bicycles manufactured this year...will exceed the total worldwide production of automobiles," it was viewed as a great equalizer--but then, when car culture took hold, as something of an anachronism confined to the poor, and now, in a time of inequality, a status symbol for the wealthy and their expensive machines. Just so, as the author notes, there's always been a tension between "bicycle love and bicycle loathing" in the Western world, where the bicycle and its forerunners were heralded as cleaner than animal-drawn vehicles and criticized for such things as showing off a little too much leg. Rosen chronicles his travels around the world to look at bicycle culture. In Dhaka, Bangladesh, which has some of the most tangled traffic jams anywhere, countless bicycle rickshaws underscore the fact that the machine is usually meant for labor and not recreation and that "the most widespread form of freight cycling is the one devoted to human cargo." Back home in New York, Rosen risks life and limb to travel a city in which "bicycle infrastructure is inadequate, and cy-clists are forced into roaring traffic on streets where motorists oper-ate with something close to impunity." At the same time, however, bicycling is "the best way to comprehend and imbibe New York." The author delivers the goods lightly and always interestingly. His opening, for instance, concerns the origins of the rubber tire thanks to the tinkering of a Belfast veterinarian tired of bumpy cobblestones, and the discussion of the worldwide bicycle-theft epidemic is eye-opening: Most locks are easily thwarted and law enforcement indifferent, all good reason to follow Rosen's lead and buy only inexpensive bikes. Fans of bicycling and how-the-world-works reportage alike will find this a great pleasure.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.