product gallery

Two Wheels Good

The History and Mystery of the Bicycle

by Jody Rosen

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES SPORTS BOOK AWARDS 2023**

'Full of delightful anecdotes and interviews and fascinating historical tales' Mail on Sunday


A panoramic portrait of the wonderous vehicle whose passenger is also its engine.

A toy, a tool, a liberator, or complete nuisance- the bicycle has been many things to many people over the decades, yet it endures as the most popular form of transport in the world. How has such a simple machine achieved so much?

Combining history, travelogue and memoir, Jody Rosen reshapes our understanding of this ubiquitous vehicle from its invention in 1817 to its present-day renaissance as a 'green machine'. Readers meet unforgettable characters- women's suffragists who steered bikes to the barricades in the 1890s, a Bhutanese king who races mountain bikes in the Himalayas, astronauts who ride a floating bicycle in zero gravity.

By examining the bicycle's past and peering into its future, Two Wheels Good forms a joyful ode to an engineering marvel of global importance.

'Funny, precise, surprising' Adam Gopnik

'Love for two-wheeled transport runs through every sentence' Economist

'Wry, rich, deeply researched' Patrick Radden Keefe
READ MORE

AUCK ON ITS WAY

WGTN IN STOCK

Pages:

416

Published:

Nov 2023

Format

Paperback

Publisher

Penguin Random House

Imprint

Vintage

ISBN:

9780099593591

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES SPORTS BOOK AWARDS 2023**

'Full of delightful anecdotes and interviews and fascinating historical tales' Mail on Sunday


A panoramic portrait of the wonderous vehicle whose passenger is also its engine.

A toy, a tool, a liberator, or complete nuisance- the bicycle has been many things to many people over the decades, yet it endures as the most popular form of transport in the world. How has such a simple machine achieved so much?

Combining history, travelogue and memoir, Jody Rosen reshapes our understanding of this ubiquitous vehicle from its invention in 1817 to its present-day renaissance as a 'green machine'. Readers meet unforgettable characters- women's suffragists who steered bikes to the barricades in the 1890s, a Bhutanese king who races mountain bikes in the Himalayas, astronauts who ride a floating bicycle in zero gravity.

By examining the bicycle's past and peering into its future, Two Wheels Good forms a joyful ode to an engineering marvel of global importance.



'Funny, precise, surprising' Adam Gopnik




'Love for two-wheeled transport runs through every sentence'
Economist



'Wry, rich, deeply researched' Patrick Radden Keefe
$35.00