The Bike and Beyond

"The bicycle is a time machine, a link to the past. But sometimes the bicycle also feels like a link to the future -- not the future we once imagined, the one with flying cars and replicators, but more like the one the Victorians might have pictured: streets crowded with bikes, strange ones of all kinds.The bicycle -- cheap, healthy and little-changed in more than a century -- is, for Laura Williamson, more than just about sport or transport. Riding a bike brings moments of joy, liberation, revolution and change. From cycling suffragists to the Christchurch rebuild, life on two wheels spins us out beyond well-trod paths to a fresh and fast-moving take on New Zealand"--from publisher.