Showing posts with label book review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label book review. Show all posts

Saturday, August 9, 2014

Bicycling Essential Road Bike Maintenance Handbook

Bicycling Essential Road Bike Maintenance HandbookBicycling Essential Road Bike Maintenance Handbook by Brian Fiske

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


So this is mostly a rant and not a review, I suppose - and not really justified (much) since I didn't waste my own money on buying it but looked over a copy from the public library (that however used my tax dollars to buy it . . . )

As noted in the Goodreads summary, this is an abbreviated version of a much longer reference book on road bike maintenance - this is supposed to be a version you can take with you.

Really?? (As they say ~) Is there someone who does that, carrying a how-to-repair-my-bike-book with them? I am doubtful. I think this is more an attempt to repurpose content already created for one container that Rodale sells into another one that costs little to create.

If you are going to spend money on a how-to-repair-a-bike book, you might as well get a good one - for me that would be the Park Tool Big Blue Book of Bicycle Repair. It provides enough detail to avoid getting into too much trouble and one might even get some useful things done correctly.

Perhaps part of the problem is that I take a bike with a title like this to include "the essentials" but it is somewhat amazing how much obscure stuff is in this tiny book. 15 pages (of 166) on Shimano Di2 and Campagnolo EPS V2! When your book includes this much information on these, your audience is clearly people who don't know when to stop spending money.

And there are just random oddities - the photographs and line drawings are downsized versions, but for a how-to book, they then lose their usefulness in many cases. Dang.

Perhaps the most useful part of the book are the "seven rules of bike repair" on a page at the beginning of the book. The first rule is, "think safety first" that includes the advice to wear rubber gloves (to protect against solvents, as far as safety is concerned) but in all the (little) photographs, the hands are bare. "Do as I say, not as I do." Fantastic.


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Saturday, April 12, 2014

The Bike Deconstructed (Book Review)

The Bike Deconstructed: A Grand Tour of the Modern BicycleThe Bike Deconstructed: A Grand Tour of the Modern Bicycle by Richard Hallett

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is one of those rare books that I get from the public library that I will probably buy a copy of later. Overall it is well done and interesting for someone with a general interest in cycling and bicycle history but who is not an expert already.

As with many books, the "blurb" is disingenuous - it says, "Do you know the difference between a head tube and a headset?" [and several other such questions] If not, this is the perfect guide for you. This sort of over-inclusive enthusiasm from the publisher (one assumes) is amusing, but probably not accurate. At less than 200 pages and with half of most pages allocated to photographs and the occasional diagram, the author assumes a fair degree of interest and acquaintance with bicycles and is a few steps beyond an introduction that clarifies what's what.

The focus is on "road bikes" but as the author explains, more than just for road racing - "the road bike is a fast- and easy-running machine with ergonomics suitable for a wide range of riding conditions. More specifically, it is a lightweight bike equipped with dropped handlebars, narrow(ish) tires, and an efficient connection between feet and pedals."

There are seven chapters: Materials, Frameset, Wheels, Drivetrain, Brakes, Contact Points, and Accessories, along with a glossary, index and limited suggestions for other reading.

Because of the abbreviated length of the text, the author makes quite a few categorical statements about subjects where there are other opinions - that's just a consequence of this kind of approach. In 35 pages he says what he can about road bike drive trains but there is no comparison to the detail in something like The Dancing Chain at 400 pages.

This isn't a book that I have sat down and read from cover to cover - although I suppose you could. I page around, look at the photographs, read the captions, maybe read some of the text, learning a few things and being entertained. A caption for a photograph of a modern handlebar says, "The oversized bulge at the handlebar center point adds strength and stiffness where needed as well as increasing the surface area available for clamping." Oh - I wondered about that. An explanation of the benefits of the modern threadless headset over the more traditional threaded headset convinced me of the advantage of the modern approach (even as I continue to admire the elegance of the appearance of my 1982 road bike with a threaded headset).

The photograph credits are from dozens of sources, mostly manufacturers, which is surprising since they were processed to achieve a standard and pleasing appearance in the book.

A fun and entertaining book to have around.



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Sunday, March 16, 2014

The Elite Bicycle: A Portrait of the World's Greatest Bicycles (Book Review)

The Elite Bicycle: A Portrait of the World's Greatest BicyclesThe Elite Bicycle: A Portrait of the World's Greatest Bicycles by Gerard Brown

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This is a coffee table book with lots of color photographs of bicycles and a fair amount of accompanying text to provide context, but I overall I was disappointed. (However since I checked this out of my public library, not terribly. I certainly wouldn't want to have spent money on this one.)

Published in the U.S. by VeloPress, this was originally published in the U.K. by another publisher. While there is some discussion of U.S. bike companies, the original audience was more European than American (or so it seems to me). And the change in the sub-title for the American edition somewhat confuses what the book is about, I think - originally it was "The Elite Bicycle: Portraits of great marques, makers and designers" and in the U.S. it is "The Elite Bicycle: A Portrait of the World's Greatest Bicycles." (Isn't the American version a tautology?)

I'm not sure the original British title is entirely consistent with the content of the book, but it is certainly more suggestive of the information in it the American one. As another person wrote, this isn't a book about bicycles so much as about bicycle parts, and there is something to that - but of course, a modern "elite bicycle" is in fact a collection of parts since there is no one company that creates both the frame+fork and then the group of parts that are bolted to that frame+fork. Also not clear from the (American) title and somewhat unexpected is the heavy emphasis on the manufacturing process rather than finished products.

I found it a little puzzling that the book doesn't present a particular kind of bicycle as this desirable "elite bicycle" clearly. This was not, as I was expecting from a book from VeloPress (not realizing that this was not their creation), oriented towards pure road racing bicycles but rather high end road bicycles for individuals who like really nice bikes but aren't going to be using them as professional cyclists. Most of the companies (those covered I have listed below) are frame builders that specialize in bespoke bicycles (i.e., built to the customer's specific requirements) but not all. And some high end bicycle parts-making companies are covered, such as Chris King and Sapim. A French family business that produces what are the world's best tubular racing tires is covered presumably because they are "the greatest" but very few of the bikes otherwise discussed would use such tires - and then, out of some sense of fairness perhaps, there is a description of Continental's tubular tire manufacturing process, too (which is in Europe, unlike most European company bicycle tires that are now made in Thailand or Taiwan, such as Michelin).

Probably the greatest shortcoming of the American title is that it suggests that the authors consider these particular bikes (and parts) to be the world's greatest. The British title is more clear that this is just about some examples of elite bicycles and not "the list." The book is very clearly (upon reading) intended as a sampling of the various ways such elite bikes are produced and not a collection of the very best.

The foreward by Sir Paul Smith sets a new standard in brevity. But they did get to put his name on cover. So there.

The Library of Congress catalog record for this book includes a list of the companies covered: Brooks -- Selle Italia -- Reynolds -- Columbus -- Cinelli -- Guru -- Chas Roberts -- Rourke -- Cyfac -- Alex Singer -- Fagg in -- Pegoretti -- Independent fabrication -- Richard Sachs -- Ben Serotta -- Condor/Paris -- Seven -- Dinucci -- Ira Ryan -- Tony Pereira -- Winter -- Spécialités TA -- Sapim -- Chris King -- Royce -- Mavic -- FMB -- Continental -- Time -- Contacts.



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Saturday, March 8, 2014

Cycle Chic by Mikael Colville-Andersen (Book Review)

Cycle ChicCycle Chic by Mikael Colville-Andersen

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


First - my five stars is because as I understand Goodreads, the idea for assigning stars is did I like the book and not is it a good book generally.

This a book of photographs with very little text, loosely organized thematically, from Mikael Colville-Andersen, the Copenhagen-based creator of the blog Copenhagen Cycle Chic.

The photographs are about the people in them and the bicycles they are with together, in support of the "Cycle Chic Manifesto". This manifesto declares things like, "I choose to cycle chic and, at every opportunity, I will choose Style over Speed" or "I will endeavour to ensure that the total value of my clothes always exceeds that of my bicycle" and "I will refrain from wearing and owning any form of 'cycle wear'."

The book includes hundreds of color photographs (and a very small number of B&W) taken all over the world, but predominately in Europe, in particular in Copenhagen. Most but not all were taken by Colville-Andersen and most appear unposed.

The role that such a (physical) book plays in our world today is an interesting (perhaps) question - one can see many of the kinds of photographs included in the book in the Copenhagen Cycle Chic blog (or many of the similar blogs that Cycle Chic provides links to). One can also see
Colville-Andersen's photos
in his Flickr account (although there are plenty of non-bicycle photos there, too). I don't have an answer to this question - in this particular case, the book seems pleasing because it emphasizes the photographs one-by-one in a way that neither Flickr nor the blog presentations do, and allows for flipping around that the Internet still doesn't support.

Fun. Good.



View all my reviews of cycling books on Goodreads.

Saturday, February 1, 2014

Two Wheels North: Bicycling the West Coast in 1909 - Book Review

Two Wheels North: Bicycling the West Coast in 1909Two Wheels North: Bicycling the West Coast in 1909 by Evelyn McDaniel Gibb

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I have a blog about cycling history and although my main interest is the 1890s, this book about two young men traveling up the west coast from Santa Rosa California to Seattle to visit the Alaska-Yukon Exposition in 1909 was both enjoyable to read and informative in its providing some sense of the obstacles to this kind of long distance cycling at that time.

The text is a first-person narrative written by the daughter of one of the two men, based on her father's description of the trip as well as post cards sent both home and to a newspaper that published updates about their travels. This historian's blog post gives a good summary of the book's contents.

As someone interested in cycling history, I was pleased to read a book that included enough description of the bicycle-related aspects of their trip. For example, they paid to have someone weld racks much like those used to hold panniers on cycles today to their bike frames in order to carry some of their baggage - although generally they traveled very light. One understands quickly why their trip was considered so unusual - the road conditions were varied but often very poor, and they ended up walking about 200 of the 1,000 miles they traveled (measured by an odometer fixed to one of the bikes). While there were macadam roads in some towns, most roads were dirt or gravel (which might be rolled gravel which was better but often not) and "corduroy" log roads and even a road made from corn stalks. Long distance travel in this part of the world was supported at this time by the railroads, not the road system.

At first it seemed surprising that they felt pressed for time when they had six weeks to go only 1,000 miles, but this was not a bike trip where there were any 100 mile days, given the road conditions in particular. In addition, they stopped from time to time to take on day jobs to earn more money to continue their trip, since they left with only about five dollars cash - apparently at this time it was generally not a problem to find such work.

One might wonder about the attraction of the Alaska-Yukon Exposition for two fellows in California - apparently the publicity across the U.S. was very well organized, and it was expected to include what would then have been exotic exhibits from Hawaii, Japan, and Alaska (among others). The site of the exhibit and some of the buildings then became the main campus of the University of Washington (where I went to school). A number of photograph books of the exhibit were published and are available today online, such as Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition or this Souvenir Guide for visitors.



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Sunday, January 26, 2014

Bikenomics - Book Review

Bikenomics: How Bicycling Can Save the EconomyBikenomics: How Bicycling Can Save the Economy by Elly Blue

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Elly Blue is a columnist for BikePortland.org and well qualified to write a book about cycling's impact on society. I suppose the rationale for the title's focus on the economic benefits of more cycling is because that is what we are all supposed to care about these days, but the twelve chapters provide something more like a reader or introduction to the main social issues of increasing use of bicycles in America, from "asphalt bubble" to "whose streets?"

As with most advocacy texts of this sort, the author's intense expressed enthusiasm for her position suggests to me that few cycling opponents would have any interest in reading this, so there may be a "preaching to the choir" problem. My public library purchased several copies (and presumably others did too); perhaps some folks who are in the middle or open to learning about the topic will consult it.

At least for me, it hasn't been easy to find books on "cycling policy" that make for engrossing reading. I certainly didn't sit down and read this from cover to cover - eventually I read about half of it, jumping around. I knew some of what was described, but I learned a few things, too.



View my reviews of cycling books.

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

My Cool Bike - Book Review

My Cool Bike: An Inspirational Guide to Bikes and Bike CultureMy Cool Bike: An Inspirational Guide to Bikes and Bike Culture by Chris Haddon

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


150-plus pages of photographs of a very wide variety of interesting ("cool") bikes with enough text describing their owners and/or history - what's not to like?

I suppose there is a certain prevailing hipster sensibility to the choices, but in a very broad sense. The only type of bicycle clearly excluded by design is that of modern racing bicycles - well, really modern mass produce bikes "for the masses" of all kinds, I suppose. Mass production bicycles from the past are included where they have been adapted for modern use in some way but otherwise the emphasis is more on bikes made in limited number for different enthusiast audiences.

The photographs are by Lyndon McNeil who apparently mostly does motor sports and vehicles - the photographs are a good mix of "action" shots and closeups of bicycles sufficient to make out interesting details.

The book was published in England so while there are some bikes from the U.S., the U.K. and Europe are much more heavily represented.

Some sections are almost more about the activities done with the bicycles than about the bicycles - from playing polo to riding around the world. The sub-title references "bike culture" - it appears that there is much variety in what that phrase may mean as there are different types of bicycles, if not more.

A lovely book to page through for the cycling enthusiast.



View all my reviews on cycling books

Monday, January 6, 2014

Land of Second Chances: The Impossible Rise of Rwanda's Cycling Team - Book Review

Land of Second Chances: The Impossible Rise of Rwanda's Cycling TeamLand of Second Chances: The Impossible Rise of Rwanda's Cycling Team by Tim Lewis

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book covers in a fair amount of detail the development of a road cycling team in Rwanda that began with the cycling equipment entrepreneur (and mountain biker) Tom Ritchey's visit to Rwanda in 2005 until the beginning of 2013. But it is more than that, with a description of the history of the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and a brief summary of the relevant history of Rwanda and the region.

Team Rwanda is more of a program to develop young Rwandans as possible professional cyclists on other teams rather than a true racing team. The team (or program) was led by an American former Tour de France racer, Jock Boyer, who was persuaded by Tom Ritchey to start the it after Tom had started a cargo bicycle program to support Rwandan coffee growers - Ritchey observed that the conditions in Rwanda were excellent to produce professional cyclists, if only they had leadership, equipment, and . . . well, a lot more. Which is what this book is mostly about.

The author's decision to spend the first ~50 pages of the book on background, including introduction of rather many people, means that this may be a difficult book for some to get into if they thought they were going to be reading mostly about a bicycle team's activities. Jock Boyer, the leader of the team, isn't even introduced until after 90 pages, as another 35 pages or so are spent on the coffee cargo bike program.

This book is as much about the challenges for Americans (or others from the west) in trying to provide on-the-ground assistance and motivation in sub-Saharan Africa as it is about a bicycle team.

With a subject like this, where the author has to choose a moment to stop his coverage of the story, the events don't necessarily cooperate to create a neat end - this seems the case here. It isn't obvious where things are going to go with Team Rwanda in the future.

Westerners seeking to provide help and the Rwandans themselves will have different views on what works and what doesn't and why or why not - the author makes this clear with an update he provides on the coffee cargo bike program that Tom Ritchey started (before Team Rwanda even came into being). Lewis follows up with the Americans who are still nominally responsible for the program and they make various excuses but mostly state that the Rwandans didn't want the cargo bicycles for cost or other reasons. Those Rwandans who received the bikes and used them (but then had maintenance problems with them, since they used them very intensely) disagree. The Rwandans claim that no parts were available but then Lewis quickly finds a warehouse of spare parts. It is not clear what the real problem or problems preventing the further success of this clever program to provide cargo bikes to Rwandan coffee growers is, just that it isn't working and that (apparently) no one understands why not. This would seem to map to discussion of the more robust and complex Rwandan cycling team.

Philip Gourevitch had a long article in the New Yorker about Team Rwanda in July 2011 (unfortunately only a short version available to non-subscribers online); this book is to some degree a much expanded version of that (albeit by a different author). There is also a documentary movie out covering the development of Team Rwanda - Rising from the Ashes.



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Sunday, December 29, 2013

Bicycle: Around the World: Around the WorldBicycle: Around the World: Around the World by Linda Svendsen

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Other than the single page introduction, there is no text aside from captions that identify the location that each photograph was taken. The pages are unnumbered but the volume is easily an inch thick, so there are several hundred pages of color photographs, some running across both pages.

The goal is to show how bicycles fit into everyday life around the world. The focus isn't on the qualities of the bicycles themselves in the usual way for books that are heavy on photographs of bicycles. Some of the photographs are crammed with bicycles in some setting while others have just one that may be off in the corner of the photograph.

This selection of three photographs from the book gives some sense of what the book is like. There is no apparent attempt to include photographs taken in every country of the world - of the ~190 countries in the world, there are probably photographs of bicycles in around 40 (I'm guessing) but there are certainly photographs from each continent (not including Antarctica). They were organized in some order that presumably made sense to the photographer but I didn't discern any pattern - photographs from a particular country may run for several pages, then from some other country, and later one finds another photograph from the first country later in the book. It seems whimsical.

Many of the bicycles shown in the developing world have obviously been subjected to heavy use and are not emblematic of bicycles as works of art or engineering. In fact the only "iconic" bicycle, presumably included without a sense of its iconic nature, is a Jack Taylor tandem shown in California. Perhaps this is repeating myself, but this is not a book of photographs of bikes to be admired in the typical way that I might.

Most of the photographs do not include the riders with the bicycles; rather the bicycles are shown parked (sometimes laying on their sides, looking more discarded than parked), waiting patiently for their riders to return.

This is not a new book or likely to be found in a bookstore selling new books. I was able to find a used copy at Powells book store for $6.50 which seemed an excellent deal.

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Saturday, December 28, 2013

Classic American Bicycles - Book Review

Classic American BicyclesClassic American Bicycles by Jay Pridmore

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book, which is now 15 years old, is a good blend of readable text and color photographs of mostly iconic bicycles from the earliest bicycles in America through the 1990s. The book is published as part of as series titled, "Enthusiast Color Series" so the presumed audience would most be people like me who are already interested and know something about bicycle history.

The photographs are generally of bicycles on exhibit at the Bicycle Museum of America - most were taken outdoors in posed settings. There are a small number of reproduction period photographs, too. Perhaps the main drawback of this kind of book is that the photographs are all full shots of the bicycles at medium distance so that you usually can't make out particular details - it really takes a coffee table size volume to have lots of close-up shots, too, I guess.

Given that more than half the space in the 96 pages is taken up with the photographs, the text does a good job of being both engaging and informative, even though it can't serve as an in-depth description of the subject. Mr. Pridmore, whose other books include ones about Schwinn's history, seems well qualified to write this book.

A book like this, focusing on "classics," tends to emphasize the unusual - for the enthusiast these are often the most interesting. And for a so-called enthusiast, that's fine - such a person will get that. As a photographic history of American bicycles more generally, however, this wouldn't work very well.

I gave this book five stars because it fulfilled my expectations for such books very well - I bought it used from Powells Book Store - I like to have books like this to pick up and page through from time to time.

View my reviews of cycling books on Goodreads.

Additional comment: Having read this book, which credits the Bicycle Museum of America as a "collaborator" on the title page, I looked at their website. I assume there are any number of reasons why small museums like this provide somewhat inferior presentations of their collections online - for one, if one could see the bicycles well on the site, why travel to New Bremen, Ohio? And also such web presentations cost money. The "online museum" includes a timeline of bicycle history (that reflects many of the highlights in the book) and an alphabetical directory of bicycles, presumably ones they have on exhibit. Oddly the entry for Pierce Arrow misspells the company's name as "Piece Arrow" in not one but two places. The selected images in this directory of bicycles are small and not likely to take away anyone's desire to visit the actual museum.

Saturday, July 13, 2013

In the City of Bikes: The Story of the Amsterdam Cyclist (Book Review)

In the City of Bikes: The Story of the Amsterdam CyclistIn the City of Bikes: The Story of the Amsterdam Cyclist by Pete Jordan

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I liked this book very much, both because the subject and the way it was handled was appealing (to me) and also because I think it is well written. I was confused however by title - I only understood what it meant properly after I had read 50 pages or so. In particular, "the story of the Amsterdam cyclist" can be understood as "a social history of cycling in Amsterdam" - "the Amsterdam cyclist" is meant to indicate Amsterdam cyclists in general from the 1890s to today. (Probably this confusion is just my problem.)

The blurb on the back cover states, "Part personal memoir, part history of cycling, part fascinating street-level tour of Amsterdam, In the City of Bikes is the story of a man who loves bikes-in a city that loves bikes." But really 90 percent of this book (which is almost 400 pages of text plus 40 pages of notes) is a history of urban cycling as transportation in Amsterdam, and to some extent in the Netherlands more generally. There is some comparison to cycling (and use of cars) in the United States, but not so much as to seem polemical. The "tour of Amsterdam" referred to in the blurb is, I think, incidental to the history of cycling for the most part (and that's fine).

The personal memoir aspect is ten percent or less of the book and mostly at the beginning and end of the book and the beginning and end of chapters. The transitions from the memoir portions to the more purely historical narrative are smooth and the style is consistent and at least for me; I was just as interested in both parts. Everyone has read a nominally "travel" book where it feels like the author is padding his or her experiences with "historical context" and the shifts from the personal travel anecdotes to the "history" portions are clunky - there is none of that here.

In fact, even though this could have been reworked as academic work on cycling history, it is far more pleasant (and just as instructive) to read the way it is, with the unobtrusive memoir sections providing helpful context by providing an understanding of "where the author is coming from."

When I got this book in my hands, I was a little doubtful - looking at a 400+ page book entirely on cycling in Amsterdam I wondered if it could really be something I would be drawn into and enjoy. Well, that turned out to be no problem - I liked it a lot.

My only slightly negative comments are minor. The chapters about cycling in Amsterdam in World War II are interesting but of the entire book it was the one part that seemed a little long. It was somewhat surprising that the "modern era" (the 1980s on) is dealt with in about twenty pages at the end (although there are mentions of modern Dutch cycling throughout, when I think about it). Having read this, I somewhat oddly feel I can tell you more about policies for Dutch cycling in WWII than today. Hmm.

It was also odd that the author's one previous book credit is writing a "memoir" of his experiences washing dishes (professionally!) in all fifty states. I regard such "listicle" type books as an artifact of our time (although I'm probably wrong about that) and not a good one. That doesn't mean I don't read such books from time to time, but many of them seem like clever ideas and don't read well - anyway, it wasn't exactly a hint in my mind of what is in this book.

For an American reader interested in cycling for transportation as an alternative, this book is a gentle (and I guess extensive) historical introduction or overview. While it is obvious that the author has a point of view and what that point of view is, the book is not written to hit the reader over the head with that.

The Publishers Weekly blurb states, "the readers will understand that the bike is to Amsterdam what the car is to America" - yes, and will understand in a helpful way why.





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Saturday, June 8, 2013

Bike Snob Abroad: Strange Customs, Incredible Fiets, and the Quest for Cycling Paradise (Book Review)

Bike Snob Abroad: Strange Customs, Incredible Fiets, and the Quest for Cycling ParadiseBike Snob Abroad: Strange Customs, Incredible Fiets, and the Quest for Cycling Paradise by BikeSnobNYC

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


In his third book, Mr. Snob produces a book that looks like it will make observations about cycling outside the United States, but it is really more about cycling with his family - to the extent that it is about anything in particular.

Having produced a first book that was fairly focused and seemed a reasonable variation on his blogging style, he then quickly produced a second book that was much the same but . . . boring. This third book lacks any structure and is 191 pages of stream of conscious.

Mr. Snob's wants to answer the question, "why can't we (motorists, pedestrians, cyclists) all get along?" based on his analysis of evidence gathered from his foreign travels. Foreign readers of his blog have paid for him to visit Gothenburg (Sweden) and San Vito dei Normanni (Italy) for a few days and he also spent a few weeks in London and Amsterdam and on the basis of three weeks in four countries, he decides that it is some kind of national American character fault - we don't like "weak stuff." (Really, that's what he concludes.)

The publisher blurb refers to "his trademark biting wit and wisdom" - I'm doubtful Mr. Snob would claim his wit and wisdom are his strong points in his blog writing. What he does well in his blog it to make some observations, generally of the "isn't that amazingly dumb?" variety, on a number of disparate cycling topics, and then tie them together at the end of the blog post, occasionally quite cleverly. He also is often somewhat potty mouthed, which isn't really necessary but is integral to his writing style (such as it is). This book has little of any of that, it hardly seems like the same author.

I checked this one out of the library, so at least it didn't cost me anything.



View my reviews of cycling books on Goodreads

Monday, February 18, 2013

Argyle Armada: Behind the Scenes of the Pro Cycling Life (Book Review)

Argyle Armada: Behind the Scenes of the Pro Cycling LifeArgyle Armada: Behind the Scenes of the Pro Cycling Life by Mark Johnson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Mark Johnson is a journalist and photographer for VeloNews, part of the same company that published this book. He is certainly well qualified to write something like this. The short description is that Johnson was "embedded" with the Garmin-Cervelo team for the 2011 pro cycling race season, taking photographs and interviewing riders, coaches, and others as the season progressed, then publishing the results as this coffee table book. Johnson says nothing controversial (at least from the team's point of view) and in the preface Johnson notes, "Neither Slipstream [the team's parent company] nor Garmin commissioned this book, but it is nevertheless an outgrowth of my long relationship with the team as a freelance writer and photographer." So this is not anything like Wide Eyed and Legless (from 1988) where an "embedded" journalist had much to say about a British team's Tour de France campaign that the team was probably unhappy about.

Most of the book's chapters are a chronological presentation of the season, starting with training and ending with the Vuelta and races in Quebec and Montreal. A final chapter, in some ways more interesting than the rest of it, is called "the business of pro cycling" that lays out in more detail than one might expect the economics of Garmin-Cervelo operations. The book runs about 200 pages with somewhat over half the space devoted to photographs rather than text. There is a good index, which is helpful in something like this.

This team is known for its unusual approach to fighting doping and that it started its anti-doping more aggressively and openly earlier than most teams. The team director, Jonathan Vaughters, talks about this generally and the topic comes up in different parts of the book. Even though things have changed with fallout from Lance Armstrong's confession, those parts of the book seem relevant.

While I was happy to get this book from the library and to page through it looking at the photos, it took me a long time to get through all of the text (which I eventually decided I should read from start to finish). Johnson's writing seems a bit stiff in this extended book-length presentation compared to his usual much shorter news items in VeloNews. Also Johnson of course had no control over the flow of the season and much of team's greatest successes came early - the narrative doesn't build to some particular success (or for that matter, failure). I also have some quibbles with the photographs - many are action shots using very wide angle lenses which I (personally) don't like all that much and because there are so many photos in what is a small-ish coffee table format book many group shots are reduced to small sizes that make me wonder if it wouldn't have been better to have fewer larger photos.

The last chapter and comments throughout the book make clear the importance of the business aspects of this team (and one assumes, to a greater or lesser degree, other teams). The mention in various places of efforts to provide special services and activities for sponsor representatives, for example. And the analysis by Vaughters of how valuable the team is for its sponsors relative to the absolute dollar cost of the team compared to other teams - Garmin was a low cost team compared to the highest spending teams but was in fourth place (out of 18) for "sporting value." Somewhat complex financial issues are laid out - for example, rider salaries are a huge part of the operational cost of cycling teams and Garmin relies on a balanced approach and avoids paying "star" salaries - this also means that if they lose a star rider who has "points" that count towards the team's WorldTour points total (that is vital to it keeping its team license) the team will not be endangered in staying part of the circuit, which is good for all the riders (and something they understand).

Johnson has a video about this on the VeloNews site.

View my reviews of cycling books.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

The Secret Race by Tyler Hamilton & Daniel Coyle (Book Review)

The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All CostsThe Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs by Tyler Hamilton

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


If I am going to review this, I should do it before Lance Armstrong's tell-all confess-all admit-all interview with Oprah is broadcast later this week. I gave this four stars because for the first 220 pages or so it is very engaging and moves along - the last fifty pages bogged down so much that it took me several days to push through to the end.

One hopes that most people who read this aren't just interested in descriptions of Lance Armstrong being bad, but both Hamilton and Coyle are well equipped to write about that. All things considered the book is a good combination of telling the story of Hamilton's bicycle racing career as a story unto itself, describing how doping became an integral part of his success, and including first hand descriptions of Lance Armstrong's race career, how he ran his team, interacted with other racers, and what his team's doping program was like.

Unlike David Millar's recent Racing Through the Dark tell-all reformed bike doper book, Hamilton clearly understands that most readers are not terribly interested in his full life story so he keeps the description of his life before racing short. The section about when he was part of the Postal Service team himself has the best descriptions of the culture of Lance's team and how the doping program (which is what it was) worked. After that, the description of his riding with CSC is interesting because Bjarne Riis, the team director, was (and is) an unusual individual and because Hamilton did well with CSC, although injuries kept him from doing much better.

Hamilton does a good job of making it clear how EPO and the "blood bags" (transfusing one's own blood during a race, drawn earlier) represented a huge improvement over previous doping, such as taking amphetamines, and how it making literally impossible to succeed in a world in which some races did take EPO and others didn't.

After describing being busted (the first time), the book becomes less interesting - particularly after he manages to win the U.S. National Road Championship in 2008 but then get busted again. His dog dies, his wife divorces him, he's a busted doper cyclist - life is not so good. But then he gets a new dog, new wife, and a new job and he tries to convince you, the reader, that life is now good (if not better). This last part is the hardest to get through and not particularly convincing or compelling.

There are a several things to read available on the Internet about Lance and doping and cycling racing that are more focused (and available free). The "reasoned decision" of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) is a book length PDF that describes year by year Lance's doping and the Postal Service (later Discovery) doping program (if you will). It is all about Lance and doping. If that is really what is of interest, it is more useful to read it than a book that in the end is more about Tyler Hamilton. A drawback of the USADA report is that it has no literary style, so to speak - it reads a like a government report (which is what it is).

Another interesting read is the transcript of seven hours of interviews with Floyd Landis by Paul Kimmage, The Gospel according to Floyd from November 2010.

One sees a number of patterns reading all this stuff. One is that part of Armstrong's success (at doping, and otherwise) was that he hired the best people to support him, including the medical people for the doping. Hamilton suggests that one of his own problems was that his doping doctor simply wasn't very good organizationally so he probably was been transfused with someone else's blood rather than his own because his medical "team" screwed up. Also, both Landis and Hamilton were quick to defend themselves against doping charges because in both cases they were absolutely sure that the charges were wrong. Landis knew he had done EPO and blood bags but not testosterone, and Hamilton was convinced he had only received his own blood back, not someone else's. The charges were wrong - that this didn't mean they were innocent otherwise seemed difficult for them to integrate into their thinking until quite some time passed. Finally, both felt that ultimately that they were ruined because unlike Armstrong they didn't have the connections and power to make the doping charges "go away" in the way Armstrong had in the past (according to them).

Some of Hamilton's anecdotes are pretty amusing - sort of. For example (and I suppose this is a spoiler) he suggests that for his second tier riders, other than his "A team," Armstrong was cheap - while he had the latest and best that Trek had to offer, most of his team didn't. One Postal rider, for example, "accidentally" backed his car over his crummy old Trek he was given in order to get something better. It's apparently not enough to work on Armstrong on the big moral issues, he wants him to look small in as many ways as he can. Hmm.

Certain details described give this book a sense of veracity that is absent in say Millar's book. (Not that Millar's isn't true, he just didn't include such things.)

* When new doping technology with good results would appear, it would be obvious because one rider or sometimes a team would suddenly perform otherwise superhuman feats, with little shame even though it was understood that this would be received as a new doping advance and not as some kind of training accomplishment. He mentions Bjarn Riis specifically, moving back and forth in the peleton as if riding a motorcycle on one occasion.

* Doping works best with coaching - with Postal, Hamilton didn't take full advantage of receiving a blood bag (his own blood drawn earlier and then transfused back in to increase his blood's oxygen carrying ability) because no one explained that the next day or so his body would not "read" this correctly and he would feel bloated and less powerful but that he could ride through that feeling - Bjarn Riis of CSC provided that valuable coaching advice.

* The "technology" of doping was constantly advancing, which gave an advantage to people like Lance who were at the cutting edge of such things. The first use of blood bags involved using only fresh ones, which had to be done within four weeks, but not long after it was possible to have one's blood acceptably frozen and then reuse that, simplifying the race calendar choices since there is a problem with giving your blood to use it later - if you just had a pint of blood drawn, your race results (if you are forced by your team to ride) in that situation are terrible.

And more. Those tidbits are interesting. And go along with Landis and the USADA report have to say.

When I reread my review of Millar's book, I remembered that one of the big negatives was his offering at least a half a dozen explicit answers to the question, "why I decided to dope." By contrast (unless I missed it), Hamilton doesn't do that even once. I believe his thought was more that you read his book and you decide.

Until Lance comes out with his version of all this, checking this out from a library for a quick read doesn't seem like a bad idea.



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Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Racing Through the Dark by David Millar (Book Review)

Racing Through the DarkRacing Through the Dark by David Millar

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Because of all the Lance Armstrong related hubbub I have not reviewed this because I thought I should do something more than just review this one book, but better to do something than nothing.

Many people who are not cycling enthusiasts will not know who David Millar is - there is a Wikipedia article that provides a lengthy overview. (Arguably it is a wiser time investment to read what is in Wikipedia than the book.)

Millar rode for several teams and was someone from whom success was expected not long after turning professional, then in 2004 he was caught doping and sat out two years. In 2006 he returned to riding as a vocal advocate for riding clean.

This memoir that clocks in at close to 350 pages has four parts: childhood through youth and early riding career, then his progressive conversion to doping followed by his being caught and banned for two years, and finally his reborn career and stance as anti-doping advocate.

The first section is too long - there is no compelling reason to have included most of what is here since little of it provides any background or explanation for what follows. Simply starting to read at page 58 or skimming up to this point would be a way of avoiding most of the pointless reading.

The second section - his professional career from 1997 through 2004 - is the most interesting part of the book. I have not read Tyler Hamilton's new book but I would guess it is similar. Millar avoids taking direct responsibility for his actions explicitly and offers a variety of excuses, including "it was expected," "the other guys were depending on me," "what I did at first wasn't doping, it is easy to slide over the line into doping" and more.

The description of his life as a cyclist and his fellow riders during this period reveals that things were quite bad - one wonders that something didn't set off a reaction then, long before Lance was busted. Riders didn't just take things to perform better during the race, they took various things to recover faster and took sleep aids as well. At one point Millar took a sleep aid while drinking (despite knowing this was unwise) and jumped from a window injuring an ankle and then not being able to ride for months.

The drinking aspect was not something I expected as apart of the story - for a professional athlete, Millar drank quite a lot. In only one photograph in the book where he was not on a bike is he not holding a drink. I suppose one can give him credit for being open about this.

The third section of the book is about being busted and serving a two year ban from riding. Millar is suitably grateful to folks who saw him through this period but in places he is whiny - given that he is a professional athlete who would drink, take pills, then injure himself it's kind of hard to feel sorry for him. He also moans and groans about his personal financial difficulties, the details of which I forgot about the instant I finished reading about them - given how much this subject may have occupied his attention during this period he likely thinks he kept description of this short, but it seemed labored to me.

The last section is the redemption section - as with many memoirs written by athletes who are still active, he doesn't want to annoy his new teammates so this is not terribly revealing (or interesting).

He makes an exception for his former teammate Bradley Wiggins who left Garmin-Slipstream for Team Sky. Millar describes his unhappiness at this (in large part, he says, because he took a pay cut so that Wiggins could earn more) and shares that he and his teammates regarded Wiggins' chances to win the Tour de France, his goal, as slim. "We looked forward to watching him fail" and "we were certain that he'd never be on the podium at the Tour." (Work on this book was completed long before the 2012 Tour de France that Wiggins won.)

Lance Armstrong comes up twice - early in his career he and Lance were both riders for Cofidis, although they didn't have that much contact since Armstrong was just coming back after cancer treatment. Much later, after the doping suspension, Millar lectured Lance at a cocktail party and Millar describes that incident in some detail. Otherwise what one gets relative to Armstrong's situation is confirmation that the culture of doping was widespread, pervasive.

The issue of doping overshadows the subject of bicycle road racing in this memoir, which is unfortunate. From time to time Millar does provide descriptions and analysis of some of his races and racing accomplishments but this comes across as a secondary topic. Millar had a number of big races where he just failed to win and much like his excuse-making with doping, he usually offers excuses for those failures. (As a memoir written with a co-author it seems remarkable that in numerous places a reader forms a less than good impression of Millar - not that he was doping, that he makes excuses and doesn't take responsibility for it more directly, and like that.)

In the 338 pages here there is around 120 pages of interesting stuff. There are some photos, both color and black and white. There is an index that can help you what what he may have said about particular people or events without plowing through all if it but no timeline for Millar's career, which would have been helpful. (You can look up his professional career accomplishments.)




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Saturday, October 27, 2012

The Masked Rider by Neil Peart (Book Review)

The Masked Rider: Cycling in West AfricaThe Masked Rider: Cycling in West Africa by Neil Peart

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Neil Peart is the drummer for the band Rush - as an author he is mostly known for writing a book about a 55,000 mile trip by motorcycle after his daughter and wife died in less than a year. This book was written and published years before that and is much lighter.

Peart had participated in cycle tours in Europe but decided to try something more challenging that would be combined with an interest in Africa, so he went on an organized bike tour of Cameroon in 1988. The operator only had Peart and three other clients on the trip. The book is a description of his trip and what it was like.

Generally "adventure" travel books don't describe organized tours but in this case the tour was probably more arduous than many independent cycle tours. The tour lasted for a month, for one thing. In the per-Internet world, they were quite isolated almost the entire time, relying on the relatively modest belongings the carried on their bikes.

There is plenty of description of how physically difficult this was over the month, with the heat and generally primitive conditions. (They generally used lower cost accommodations even when western style ones were available, mostly to keep costs down.). He does a good job of describing what he saw and experienced. Much of the focus, as with most travel books, is on his interactions with people, both the people of Cameroon and his fellow travelers and the tour leader. (I wonder what his fellow travelers thought of this - it is somewhat critical of each of them.)

From time to time Peart engages in introspective reflections that I gather are more the point of his motorcycle book - I found these passages did not interrupt the narrative. I enjoyed reading this and will likely read it again.

You were always aware this was a book about travel by bicycle but there was not much description of anything particularly technical about that aspect. As a cyclist I felt like I had a good sense of the difficulties for cycling in this part of the world as a tourist from reading this (although things have likely changed since this was almost 25 years ago). The tour operator is still in business at http://www.ibike.org/bikeafrica/.



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Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Travels with Willie: Adventure Cyclist (Book Review)


Travels with Willie: Adventure CyclistTravels with Willie: Adventure Cyclist by Willie Weir

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This is a compilation of columns Willie Weir wrote for Adventure Cyclist magazine. Weir's role in that magazine, it seems, is to provide an article each issue that serves to motivate its readers to further exploits in the activity known as "adventure cycling." Given that the readers of the magazine are all members of the Adventure Cycling Association, there is a certain "preaching to the choir" element to this, and Weir chooses to focus on a narrow part of the activity, the opportunity to meet, talk and even bond with people through travel by bicycle.

Weir's view is that world travel by bicycle is exceptional because one's bicycle serves as a way to present yourself to others that opens up conversations in ways that other travel does not. Almost all of the 42 chapters in this book serve as examples of how that has worked for him - from Turkey to Thailand to different parts of North America. So most of the detailed anecdotes are about the different people he met - how they met, how they spent time together, and so on.

Of course most "bicycle-travel" literature focuses heavily on the "human relations" aspect of the trip, but here there is rather little of anything else. One realizes eventually that he sometimes rides with his wife on a tandem and sometimes they take separate bikes, but there is perhaps one sentence about the implications of undertaking such trips with one's spouse - how they make it work. There is one anecdote about getting bicycles onto flights as checked baggage without paying a "bicycle fee" but there could be many such stories about having a bicycle during international travel that seem like missed opportunities (one guesses . . . ).

Presumably this monochromatic aspect is the result of a book that is compiled from short articles that each had roughly the same goal and weren't intended to serve as part of a long narrative. I'm not saying I didn't find it enjoyable to read - mostly I did - but it became clear after about 50 pages that this wasn't really going anywhere it hadn't been already except to swap in different locations.

Weir's style also became a little fatiguing over the length of a book. His average paragraph has (I'm estimating) two sentences, but there are quite a few paragraphs of one sentence. If you pause to consider what you know about writing it seems like he could have consolidated a lot of these little paragraphs into longer ones that flow better. What may work fine as an article doesn't necessarily work for extended reading.

The book has some black and white photographs - these serve to show the scenery occasionally mentioned as another benefit of adventure cycling. Some of the photos are quite good.



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Sunday, September 2, 2012

Slaying the Badger (Book Review)

Slaying the Badger: Greg LeMond, Bernard Hinault, and the Greatest Tour de FranceSlaying the Badger: Greg LeMond, Bernard Hinault, and the Greatest Tour de France by Richard Moore

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The title doesn't mean much to people who aren't (relative to regular people) deep into road racing history and would know that "the badger" is Bernard Hinault, who won the Tour de France five times. The sub-title however makes the subject somewhat more clear: "Greg LeMond, Bernard Hinault and the greatest Tour de France" - this book ponders what Hinault meant when he seemed to promise that after winning his fifth Tour in 1985, he would work in 1986 to help LeMond win his first. (A problem with Mr. Hinault is that his statements can often be understood in more than one way.) To do this, the author (who observed the 1985 and 1986 Tours firsthand) interviewed Hinault, LeMond, and others who might provide some insights. He then inserts material from these recent interviews into what is first a review of Hinault and LeMond's history in cycling followed by a day-by-day account of the 1986 Tour.

The overall result is a decent history of the Tour in 1985 and 1986 with some background that reads well, other than these occasional detours into further musing on what Hinault really was thinking. Motivation ("what was he thinking?") is interesting, but since Hinault is clearly not going to offer more insights than he has to date, the constant returning to this topic in this book eventually became a little tiresome - but that could be me.

The author notes in an afterword for the US edition that in the original UK edition, the sub-title was "the greatest ever Tour de France" - he took "ever" out of the sub-title to suggest that he is open to other suggestions on which was "the greatest ever." I'm not sure he has solved the problem - what I think he means is that this was the greatest duel between two riders in a Tour de France - but that would have made for a rather long sub-title.

An interesting point made several times in interviews in the book is that regardless of what he had in mind, Hinault effectively created a situation with his tactics that meant he was in a race with the rest of the field plus LeMond while LeMond was in a race with Hinault alone, and that this simplified things greatly for LeMond even as Hinault may have mercilessly messed with LeMond's mind.



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Thursday, August 9, 2012

100 Years of Bicycle Component and Accessory Design (Book Review)

100 Years Of Bicycle Component And Accessory Design: The Data Book (Cycling Resources) (Cycling Resources)100 Years Of Bicycle Component And Accessory Design: The Data Book (Cycling Resources) by Van Der Plas Publications

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


The sub-title on the book itself is "authentic reprint edition of the data book." The "data book" referred to is a 1983 Japanese publication that Is several hundred pages of line drawings of parts of bikes, apparently taken from a variety of publications. It is somewhat whimsically organized, grouping together particular components and then providing examples from the 1880s through the 1950s. (It isn't clear why it refers to 100 years of data; the book doesn't cover 100 years.) the book was compiled for Japanese cycling enthusiasts originally. The Japanese book translated is a compilation from four longer volumes of similar materials put together by the president of the Japanese Joto Ringyo bicycle company.

The book's description says it includes English translations of the Japanese text, but there is little text provided so this doesn't amount to much. Apparently this American edition sound some interest since the copy I have is a second printing. Still, it is Something for enthusiasts and the almost complete lack of information about what one is looking at is peculiar. This book is not to be confused with something like "the Dancing Chain."

I happened to find this at Half Price Books in Seattle for 20 dollars and at that price it has a certain entertainment value but at the original price of $39.95 it doesn't seem worth having.



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