Cycling has experienced a renaissance in the United States, as cities around the country promote the bicycle as an alternative means of transportation. In the process, debates about the nature of bicycles--where they belong, how they should be ridden, how cities should or should not accommodate them--have played out in the media, on city streets, and in city halls. Very few people recognize, however, that these questions are more than a century old.

The Cycling City is a sharp history of the bicycle's rise and fall in the late nineteenth century. In the 1890s, American cities were...

Evan Friss traces the colorful and fraught history of bicycles-and bicyclists-in New York City. He uncovers the bicycle's place in the city over time, showing how the bicycle has served as a mirror of the city's changing social, economic, infrastructural, and cultural politics.