Now, the final two (and if you are reading this before the other reviews about bikes, that should read: the first two) books I was going to add to a one review about bicycle books are The Running Machine: The Invention of the Very First Bicycle by Keith Negley (due mid-late July 2024) and Birth of the Bicycle: A Bumpy History of the Bicycle in America 1819–1900 by Sarah Nelson and illustrated by Iacopo Bruno (due early July). I know I could babble on about both but I really want to pair these as they are the perfect companions for each other. I could not have wished for better timing or a pairing.
The Running Machine, at first, didn’t seem like a bicycle book. It felt like it was going to be a book about logging, the forests, the magic and myths of Germany. But soon, it does go into a bicycle book, all because of a volcano in Indonesia. Long story short, the volcano exploded, really covering the world with ash. The results were a year without summer. There was snow in July even. This made farming bad and people were unable to keep their horses. This inspired a forest inspector to create the first velocipede (a man powered vehicle/bicycle that wouldn’t need horses). Well, at least not right away, and actually, as the extras tell us, this might just be poetic license by the author, but still, it was this time the experiments happened. Finally a machine was made, it had its run, and things were not perfect but they would lead to the modern day bike in about 60 or so years.
And this is where Birth of the Bicycle comes into play. Author Nelson takes things from the early stages to what would eventually lead to the modern day bicycle. Of course, this is not just a one man (or even just a German) event, but people around the world would have a say in things and would have a hand in making the machines popular, or banned. We do not just see the history of the bicycle or the items that came before, but we are also seeing a bit of history. The bicycle would change fashion (women would start wearing “bloomers” and other split-skirts to ride in), it would influence laws (due to the accidents the velocipedes, they were banned), and they would influence how people traveled (eventually making them inexpensive so all types of people, and not just the rich, could afford them).
And I could go on and on about the illustrations, but I will say they are just wonderfully fitted for the story. They are the right color setting the tone of things, making The Running Machine flow more as a fiction story and not just dull facts, and Birth have the facts, and be set up as a nonfiction book, but is colorful and bold enough to make it fun and not just “fact after fact after fact after fact”…. The illustrations in this one perhaps I preferred a bit more than Negley’s work, but both are interesting and really grab your attention and pull you into the stories.