Fat Tire: A Celebration of the Mountain Bike [Hardcover]

Amici Design (Author), Joe Breeze (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 1999

The invention of the mountain bike revolutionized cycling, created an entirely new Olympic sport, spawned a slew of slick magazines, and transformed the way tens of millions of outdoor enthusiasts around the world get back to nature. For them there is Fat Tire, a history and celebration of these agile, adventuresome, all-terrain machines and the people who ride them. Inside are hundreds of amazing photos, interviews with the founders, profiles of champions, and much more. The author and a long list of contributors—die-hard bikers and biking advocates—cover the designers, inventors, and frame builders; tales of the trails; style, gear, and components; evolution of the machine; Slick Rock and other extreme challenges and biking meccas—you name it. This is a glorious, full-color, full-speed, first-hand look at the culture, equipment, and key people of the most popular evolution of the bicycle ever. Oh, and that’s real tread on the cover.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

YA-A soup-to-nuts overview of the history, technology, and culture of the mountain bike. The cover alone will attract young adults, for an actual piece of tire tread adorns one side of it. While this tread may present a little shelving inconvenience, the book won't stay on the shelves for long. This somewhat eclectic volume is actually quite informative, covering topics as divergent as a history (with a 1921 photo) of Shozaburo Shimano (founder of one of the biggest bike R and D firms), detailed descriptions of parts from suspension forks and drivetrains to hubs, to interviews with mountain-bike champions. Copious glossy, color photographs illustrate each of the five major sections. The descriptions of "Mountain Bike Meccas" are accompanied by breathtaking photos of destinations from Moab, UT, to the Inca Trail of Peru. Even readers who are not familiar with this sport will have a good time with this book.
Becky Ferrall, Stonewall Jackson High School, Manassas, VA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Fat Tire

Reviews From:

I.D. MAGAZINE

By Tom Vanderbilt
Fat Tire provides a wide-ranging breezy account of the transition from thrift-store "clunkers" to a multimillion-dollar industry in which industrial designers and engineers used high-performance metals such as titanium and composite materials, and have introduced innovations ranging from disk brakes to the Y-frame. They also shaved, in a single year, some six pounds off the weight of the average bike. Mountain biking, the authors write, has become a "vehicle for competition, commerce, artistic expression, fashion, friendly association and pilgrimage." Its constituency has broadened to include everyone from the "bacon" (bike slang for scab) covered, mud-splattered downhillers to outlaw messengers to Berkeley bike cops; and the junk parts of yesteryear have been supplanted by RapidFire shifters and Spinergy composite wheels. The original desire to get the best ride "using whatever technology possible" lingers on, however, in the quest for the tire that never goes flat or the derailleur-less design. Fast company, indeed.

If you love mountain bikes, check out Fat Tire, a new book about the history of the most popular type of bicycle sold in America. The book, which has part of an actual knobby mountain bike tire stripped across the cover, tells how, in less than 25 years, the mountain bike evolved from the old balloon tire Schwinns of the 1930s into the world's most popular style of bicycle.

The cover alone of Fat Tire: A Celebration of Mountain Biking makes it a great gift. A large, rubber tire tread is laid across the hard cover in this bountifully illustrated homage to this cycling phenomena. Created by Lee Jakobs, photographer Robert Carra and writer Dan Imhoff, this is an entertaining and passionate look at culture, equipment, places and key people of this radical bike evolution.

 

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 144 pages
• Publisher: Chronicle Books; 1ST edition (March 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811819825
• ISBN-13: 978-0811819824
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 8.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,121,187 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars kind of like a coffee table book, June 9, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Fat Tire: A Celebration of the Mountain Bike (Hardcover)

This book is best bought for the pictures. The photography is awesome. You dont learn techniques, but you learn history and personalities. I thought that the pictures were so beautiful that the book is worth it just for them. I got the book at the library but plan to buy it for myself.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Mountain biking 101, February 19, 2003

By 

H3@+h "Over 1500 reviews!" (thanks for the helpful review votes) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fat Tire: A Celebration of the Mountain Bike (Hardcover)

It is kind of cool to have actual tire tread on the cover. But I did get this because I like mountain biking, and it was on sale. Anyway. Basically just a history lesson. Does have great pictures, but also plenty to read. It covers everything from the very first fat tire bikes, right up through disc brakes and any other advances from recent history. If I remember correctly it also comments on the people and culture of biking through the years. Nothing too deep. Like someone else said, good coffee table book.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mountain Bike Treasure, April 8, 2010

By 

Arianna Tufts (Amsterdam) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fat Tire: A Celebration of the Mountain Bike (Hardcover)

This book is a classic. I loved the tire tread on the cover. The sport has changed since this book was published, it makes me want to get a lighter bike!