Category Archives: Book updates

Blurbs

The front cover of Bike Boom can be seen above, but here’s the back cover, too. It contains the all-important blurbs. Text too small to read? Click for a larger version or read the full text is below.

The book majors on the bike booms of the 1930s in the UK and the 1970s in the USA. Between 1934 and 1939 Britain’s Ministry of Transport paid local authorities to install cycle tracks. Seventy or so schemes were built, resulting in perhaps as many as 280 miles of cycle tracks, some of them protected with curbs. The great majority were built – 9-ft wide and both sides of the roads – next to the new bypasses of the era; a few were built on “trunk roads” through residential areas, such as in Sunderland and Oxford. The Kickstarter for this project is now LIVE.

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Journalist Carlton Reid sets out to discover what we can learn from the history of bike “booms” in this entertaining and thought-provoking book.

Advance Praise for Bike Boom

“Bike Boom is full of heroes fighting for safe places for bikes, up against the goliath of mass motorization. Carlton deftly tells the stories of the major battles over bikes in Europe and the U.S. from the 30s through the 70s. Not much has changed: we are still facing the same forces today, with the same arguments for and against. The book is a loving testament to yesterday’s scrappy champions with lessons for all who persist today.” —Martha Roskowski, Vice President of Local Innovation, PeopleForBikes

“Carlton Reid brings an essential—and often forgotten—historical depth to ongoing debates about cycling and cycling infrastructure. In Bike Boom, he maps the deeply political struggles that are hidden behind seemingly technical, or even banal, issues. Indispensable reading for those trying to grasp cycling, but even more so for those who are fighting the continuous fight for its place in contemporary cities and societies.” —Marco te Brömmelstroet, Academic Director, Urban Cycling Institute; Associate Professor in Urban Planning, University of Amsterdam

“Carlton Reid is one of the most well respected authors in the cycling world today, and with good reason. He is renowned for his political insight and meticulous research. Building on his earlier works—which delve into the history of this multi-purpose machine—Bike Boom is a beautifully fluid account of contemporary cycling and raises Carlton’s reputation as a leading cycling aficionado to new heights.” —Chris Boardman, Senior Policy Advisor at British Cycling and Co-founder of Boardman Bikes

CARLTON REID is the executive editor of BikeBiz magazine, a publication for the bicycle trade based in the UK. He is author of Roads Were Not Built for Cars.

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Bike Boom will be available in June from Island Press, Washington, DC. The index and 800+ footnotes for the book are already online.

How a book dedication saved this bicycle advocate’s life

Riding a bicycle is life-affirming, but I never thought writing a history book about cycling could have the sort of impact I’m about to relate.

Montreal in Quebec, Canada, was a hot-bed of cycle advocacy in the 1970s and 1980s, one of the key reasons that city now has hundreds of miles of cycleways, including a two-mile curb-protected cycleway smack-bang in the Central Business District.

Montreal became bicycle-friendly because of people power. Bicycle-advocacy group Le Monde à Bicyclette was founded in April 1975, and many of the campaign tactics it employed – such as die-ins – are still used by advocacy groups around the world.

The anti-automobile activism group was cofounded by Claire Morissette and Robert “Bicycle Bob” Silverman. The curb-protected cycleway in the Central Business District was built in 2007, replaced a car lane, and was named for Morissette, who had died from cancer earlier in the same year.

To research Bike Boom I visited Montreal, and hung out with some of the 1970s members of Le Monde à Bicyclette. This is my pic of Robert on the Piste Claire-Morissette (I ferried him around in a Christiana cargo trike):

Bike Boom is dedicated to him:

For Robert “Bicycle Bob” Silverman and all of the other 1970s cycle advocates who tended cycling’s flame when planners and politicians were trying to snuff it out.

Last week I sent Robert a proof of the designed pages. His reply took me by surprise:

“Thank you for dedicating the book to me. Reading it actually saved my life. I’m going blind with macular degeneration which started a few years ago, which was combined in early October with a stroke. Life has been very hard; so bad that I cannot ride a bicycle any more, cook, or do other very simple tasks. I was prepared to take my own life, but changed my idea after reading your dedication.

“This is true, not an exaggeration. In Quebec, dying with dignity is legal … But since receiving your dedication [my mind has] changed.

“When I became a bicycle advocate [in the 1970s], for the first time I had a reason to live. I would ride a bike, and that in itself was revolutionary … I have dedicated my life to making the world a better place via a simple solution: the bike!”

I was very touched by Robert’s candour, and asked his permission to tell this particularly sensitive tale.

Wonderfully, Robert is now working with local advocates to produce an in-depth history of Le Monde à Bicyclette and will also be dictating a number of hard-hitting bicycle blog-postings. Bike power!

Bike Boom – the book

The Kickstarter for my new book – Bike Boom – has gone live.

Bike Book, front and back cover plus spine

Fill out my online form.