... excellent.

... takes readers time-traveling and globe-trotting to build up an alternate narrative about a simple machine that becomes harder to categorize the more you learn about it.

... shifts from tales of enchantment and wild legends to more factual accounts and events grounded in history. The approach is akin to how Rosen, a longtime cyclist himself, describes the act of traveling on two wheels: an experience like 'gliding somewhere between terra firma and the huge horizonless sky.' That is a beautiful expression of the book’s ambition, but it also covers a lot of territory. In certain chapters, I did find myself wondering if the book’s appeal would be limited to 'bicycle obsessives,' as Rosen calls them, or if his work would charm general audiences in the way that John McPhee, for example, inspires laypeople to read about remote landscapes and geologic history.

What develops out of these entertaining chapters is a story of the bicycle as a great disrupter.

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.

High-flying.

A lively social history.