I first met Joe outside a John Prine concert at Oaks Park. I was standing in back next to my bike as he came over to talk bikes. The usual stuff, tires, seats, routes. He told me he was a bike writer as well as a bike rider, and I soon came to realize I had read and admired many of his stories. I have met up with him many times since, and have a few of his books, as well as a signed copy of “Metal Cowboy”. He is a writer with great sense of energy, humor and what it means to him to ride a bike. I am interested to hear his stories of their family bike ride across Canada. “Mud, Sweat and Gears: One Family’s Rowdy Adventure Across Canada on Seven Wheel”, that should be published this summer.
Today, he reviews another bicycling book.
Nonfiction review: “Pedaling Revolution”
Posted On OregonLive by Joe Kurmaskie, Special to The Oregonian March 13, 2009 13:46PM
Ten years ago, if an established reporter had devoted an entire book to the bicycle as political statement and tool for making cities more livable, publishers would have greeted it with folded arms and awkward silence. What a difference an oil war, Wall Street excess, $4-a-gallon gas and a global recession make. But calling “Pedaling Revolution: How Cyclists Are Changing American Cities,” by Jeff Mapes, The Oregonian’s senior political reporter, a happy accident of timing shortchanges it.
To date, “Pedaling Revolution” is easily the best book-length examination of cycling culture and its connection to big-picture issues. It could do for bicycling what “Fast Food Nation” and “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” did to put food choices on people’s radar, and what “The Long Emergency” has done to educate people about peak oil. n less-assured hands, “Pedaling Revolution” could have been a wreck, devolving into a passionate rant short on facts, or turned into a lifeless manual for wonks, devoid of personal stories that circle back to larger issues. Either would have lost Mapes’ intended audience: middle-class commuters living in an urban setting, unaware or misinformed about the nature and growing importance of this two-wheeled revolution. Continue reading →