The book, with a pleasantly-written introduction by Lance Armstrong, is divided into six chapters which cover, in this odd order, the love of children for cycling, bicycling culture, the history of the bicycle, arts and the bicycle, the mountain bike and the Tour de France. The book seems to be directed towards very recent converts to cycling. There is a disproportionate number of photos of Lance Armstrong, admittedly a great cyclist, and the fact that the racing sections really focus on the Tour de France, with only a nod to the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta and nothing on the great Classics races, makes the slant towards readers in the United States very clear. The photos of racing are not well-captioned, nor would they be considered great examples of the kind in any case. There are some errors that fact-checking should have quickly found, such as confusing a safety bicycle with a velocipede in one caption. There is also the claim that derailleurs were not allowed in the Tour de France until 1929 when the correct year is 1937--which says something about those iron-legged racers who ground their way up mountains to the cheers of their fans, who had already ridden up on the peaks thanks to their variable gearing!

Other aspects of cycling, such as the exciting Six Day Races still run in front of big crowds in Europe, are given short shrift, but the non-competitive aspects of cycling suffer the most--a few pictures of Chinese peasants carting produce,nothing about bike commuting and, most disappointing of all, a single solitary picture of cycletourists on Page 96. Travel by bicycle opens up beautiful areas of the world to the cyclist, such as the Alpine Panorama Route in Switzerland, or the Pacific Coast Highway in California. And while RAGBRAI is shown, why nothing about the masochistic Paris-Brest-Paris ride?

Not a coffee-table book, nor a real history of the bicycle (to its credit it mentions that the famous crude drawing of the bicycle found in Da Vinci's notebook could be a fake), I would characterize this book as Nice to Have but certainly not Truly Great. The best book in this genre remains Pryor Dodge's totally enchanting and quite eccentric "The Bicycle." Even if it has a shiny black dustjacket too.

The text is weighted somewhat toward the racing crowd, and I do agree with the reviewer who said there's not enough about touring (or, in my opinion, commuting, which is the major use of the bicycle worldwide). However, I can't help but smile when I see images of Albert Einstein on a bike or look at the "streamlined" Aerocycle built for the 1933-34 World's Fair. It looked like a motorcycle--and probably weighed as much as one too.

"A bicycle is the long-sought-after means of transportation for all of us who have runaway hearts," writes Lance Armstrong in the first line of the book's Forward. If that line strikes a chord with you, if you're idea of a perfect afternoon is gliding silently across a green, glowing landscape on two wheels, if you've ever viewed a bicycle as a friend (or therapist), then have a look at the Noblest Invention.