Books books books [books]

[rebeccmeister]

Because I suspect there might be some interest here: I asked over on the Tweet-machine for recommendations for books covering the history of bicycling in the U.S. from 1870 - present. Probably the best starting point is here:

https://bookshop.org/lists/the-war-on-cars-reading-list

This doesn't tell us how good any of these books are, but it's a starting point, at least. The curator of this list pointed towards Guroff's book (The Mechanical Horse) and Evan Friss (The Cycling City) as particularly useful resources.

Now, my lecture this upcoming Tuesday is "A Brief History of Bicycling in the USA," so I suspect I won't manage to read either of these in time for that lecture. But it's useful to have some starting points. I'll be curious to see what kinds of biases come up as the authors write about the topic.

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[rebeccmeister]

Shortly after I posted this, someone also pointed me to this lecture by Peter Norton, author of a book called Fighting Traffic, which talks about some of the rhetorical shifts that occurred in the U.S. between ~1915 and 1945 with regards to who owns streets and how they are used:

https://youtu.be/Zjd7PBTPFuU

The person who posted the video also had a little bit of interesting commentary in their review of Norton's book.

At this point, it's looking like my lecture will focus on 3 things: the technological innovations that have happened, what has happened to the use of public spaces such as streets as bicycles and automobiles became more prevalent, and a bit on the role of the bicycle in the early stages of the women's rights movement.

Still a lot more to learn, though, obviously.