An enamored history of the bicycle alongside a lifelong cyclist’s personal story of journeying to workshops throughout Europe and the United States to acquire his custom-built dream bike, part by part.
Debut author Penn finds an almost spiritual solace in cycling, riding for “a broad church of practical, physical and emotional reasons.” The author’s ability to describe the joys of bicycling—the space for thought that the rhythm creates, the freedom of swooping down a hill, the satisfaction of having pedaled to the top—is one of the book’s strengths, along with anecdotes of his experiences cycling around the world years earlier. After biking for decades on dozens of models, Penn decided it was time to choose the one: a bicycle perfectly fitted for him and made to last 30 years. He spared no expense or effort, visiting the shops where the components were handmade by craftsmen who still consider building a bike an art. Each chapter is about a different part of the bike: the frame/wheels/saddle, etc., the philosophies and personalities of their makers and the parts’ roles in the history of the machine. The prototype of a bicycle was surprisingly not invented until 1817 during a horse shortage. Pedals, ball bearings, “high-wheelers” and chains followed, and the world’s first modern bicycle, the Rover Safety, was born in 1885. The working class became mobile, the Tour de France was inaugurated in 1903, the arrival of the automobile almost eclipsed the bike and some California hippies saved the industry with the mountain bike. Penn believes the bicycle is now entering another golden age, when health and environmental concerns increase its relevancy. This chronology often folds over on itself with chapters organized around specific bike parts, but the author manages to avoid the stagnancy of linear history or the more common error of making it all about himself. If you don’t long for your own bike at the end of this book, you will at least never look at one the same way again.
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-60819-538-1
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Effectively sobering. Suffice it to say that Pop Warner parents will want to armor their kids from head to toe upon reading...
A maddening, well-constructed tale of medical discovery and corporate coverup, set in morgues, laboratories, courtrooms, and football fields.
Nigeria-born Bennet Omalu is perhaps an unlikely hero, a medical doctor board-certified in four areas of pathology, “anatomic, clinical, forensic, and neuropathology,” and a well-rounded specialist in death. When his boss, celebrity examiner Cyril Wecht (“in the autopsy business, Wecht was a rock star”), got into trouble for various specimens of publicity-hound overreach, Omalu was there to offer patient, stoical support. The student did not surpass the teacher in flashiness, but Omalu was a rock star all his own in studying the brain to determine a cause of death. Laskas’ (Creative Writing/Univ. of Pittsburgh; Hidden America, 2012, etc.) main topic is the horrific injuries wrought to the brains and bodies of football players on the field. Omalu’s study of the unfortunate brain of Pittsburgh Steeler Mike Webster, who died in 2002 at 50 of a supposed heart attack, brought new attention to the trauma of concussion. Laskas trades in sportwriter-ese, all staccato delivery full of tough guy–isms and sports clichés: “He had played for fifteen seasons, a warrior’s warrior; he played in more games—two hundred twenty—than any other player in Steelers history. Undersized, tough, a big, burly white guy—a Pittsburgh kind of guy—the heart of the best team in history.” A little of that goes a long way, but Laskas, a Pittsburgher who first wrote of Omalu and his studies in a story in GQ, does sturdy work in keeping up with a grim story that the NFL most definitely did not want to see aired—not in Omalu’s professional publications in medical journals, nor, reportedly, on the big screen in the Will Smith vehicle based on this book.
Effectively sobering. Suffice it to say that Pop Warner parents will want to armor their kids from head to toe upon reading it.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8757-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
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