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With cities across the country adding miles of bike lanes and building bike-share stations, bicycling is enjoying a new surge of popularity in America. It seems that every generation or two, Americans rediscover the freedom of movement, convenience, and relative affordability of the bicycle. The earliest two-wheeler, the draisine, arrived in Philadelphia in 1819 and astonished onlookers with the possibility of propelling themselves "like lightning." Two centuries later, the bicycle is still the fastest way to cover ground on gridlocked city streets.Filled with lively stories, The Mechanical Horse reveals how the bicycle transformed American life. As bicycling caught on in the nineteenth century, many of the country's rough, rutted roads were paved for the first time, laying a foundation for the interstate highway system.



About the Author

Margaret Guroff

Margaret Guroff is an American magazine editor and writer who teaches nonfiction writing courses at The Johns Hopkins University. She is also the editor and publisher of Power Moby-Dick, an online annotation of Herman Melville's classic novel. Her cultural history book, The Mechanical Horse: How the Bicycle Reshaped American Life, was published in 2016 by the University of Texas Press. She lives in Bethesda, Maryland.



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