Customer Reviews

Tour de France/Tour de Force: A Visual History of the Worlds Greatest Bicycle Race

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Then get this book, it's great. Great because it takes the reader through the history of the Tour, offering fun anecdotes, excellent vintage & contemporary photographs, interesting illustrations of Tour adverts & posters through time, etc. Plus, it lists all the Tour winners from the race's inception, including the 2nd & 3rd place finishers with their times. If you're into the Tour, if you always wondered what it looked like in the old days, riding through the Alps on dirt roads, shooing cows out of the way, then you won't be disappointed with this book. There's only one Tour de France per year, but you can peruse this book every day. Allez!

The 100th anniversary edition of the Tour de France/Tour de Force is a little hard to characterize. The volume's size and emphasis on photography make it seem like coffee table book, and yet the ambitious if not comprehensive text examining 100 years of history of the world's greatest bicycle race make it appear to be something of a reference resource.

That's not necessarily a good thing, because when something tries to do too much, it often ends up doing what it does badly. In the case of this book, "badly" may be too strong -- but it does leave something to be desired.

Much of the period between the wars are glossed over, for example, and the quality of the photography is uneven. The characterization of some riders (most notably, five-time champion Jacques Anquetil) can be a little patronizing, and the introduction by three-time winner Greg LeMond seems way off the mark (evidently, Mr. LeMond thought the assignment was to subjectively recount his victories rather than record his view of the Tour as a whole -- the second introduction by gifted cycling journalist Samuel Abt is much better, and the discussion of Mr. LeMond's career in the main part of the book is a fairer treatment of it).

But despite those faults, I find I still enjoy this book a great deal. Maybe it's a soft spot in my heart for this kind of history: to read that riders for many years sipped on champagne and puffed on cigarettes for energy, that the first Tour's riders rode more than 250 miles a day (albeit for one week rather than three), that they had to dismount their bikes to change gears by hand, and that the winning riders were once on their bikes for nearly 250 hours during the span of the race (compared to less than 100 hours in most modern editions). And while I was puzzled by the selection of some photos (several just show groups of unidentified riders from different points in the race's history), the best shots are very, very good.

In the end, the strong point of the book is the context it provides. For die-hard cycling fans, any book of this scope holds a certain attraction. But the case is more compelling when it comes to more recent cycling fans, many of whom came to the sport only after Lance Armstrong started his amazing string of Tour de France victories in 1999. For them, a book like this provides an invaluable way to understand the sport better and to meet the ghosts of the past champions Mr. Armstrong will ultimately be measured against.

This book has wonderful old pictures of the tour plus a year by year history of the event. A "must have" for bicycle fans.

Every saga has a Beginning...Like the Tour de France. I think that only this book need more details about the other champions like Pedro Delgado, Laurent Fignon, Stephen Roche, Felice Gimondi,Marco Pantani, Jan Ullrich, Denmark Riss, same as the others super champions with more tour victories, because any rider that won the tour...All of they..are monsters and then, they have the honor that the world know the name of them. Congratulations to James Startt for this excelent book of the Tour de France History. Zomar.

Thanks to Lance Armstrong the Tour de France has finally broken through all the stick-and-ball-sports coverage to enter the American consciousness. Now, American viewers can turn on the Outdoor Life Network, now known as "Versus" and witness the world's biggest annual sporting epic. In this large-format, paperbound book, James Startt, and American expatriate, gives readers an excellent introduction to the history and lore of the Tour, which dates back to 1903. He chronicles the evolution of the event from a little-known publicity stunt for the sporting paper that evolved into l'Equipe into a worldwide phenomenon. The photography selected for the book is brilliant, ranging from poignant black-and-white images from the early years to the crisp color photography of the modern era. Although the tour is only one event on the seven-month-long cycling calendar, it is the most prestigious and thus the subject of a growing shelf of English-language books.

I bought the book as a gift for a cycling fan who has followed the Tour since the 1930s and while he was thrilled with the beautiful images and details, some critical years have been over looked. There is absolutely no coverage for the years 1935-1939 and the Maes brothers. Other riders and stories are missing as well. The book is good but maybe there are too many large pictures and too little text. If you're new to the Tour de France, it's a good starting point, but if you know the history of la Grande Boucle -- you'll find more meat elsewhere.

This is a perfect book for the cycling enthusiast, especially if they follow the greatest bicyling race of them all, The Tour de France. This book is a good compliment to another entitled Inside the Tour de France: The Pictures, the Legends, and the Untold Stories of the World's Most Beloved Bicycle Race. Not only is this book well written, in a simple and concise format but it is higly informative without bogging you down with too much information. This is a highlight book, kind of like a sports edition highlight package of the TDF. This is a historical document that presrves the legends of cycling who came before the more familiar recent names like Lance Armstrong and the other competitive American entries of late. I think the history of the TDF is fascinating, complete with legendary figures and a mystique of it's own. The hardships the old atheletes must have endured is almost unbelieveable if it hadn't really happened. All the legends are here from the modern era as well, beginning with the first five time TDF winner Jacques Anquetil, Bernard Hinault, Eddy Merckx, LeMond Miguel Indurain and Lance Armstrong. The real selling point of this book are the amazing photographs, especially those that are from the early days of the TDF. Seeing the men climbing alone on dirt roads, full of rocks is priceless. One photograph stands out especially in my mind of a rider with three gigantic glass bottles(requiring a bottle opener no less) stuffed into the rear pockets. The bottles practically reach the riders shoulder blades they are so huge! Another classic is Maurice Garin, the chimney sweep turned racer who wins the first TDF. I guess his lungs weren't full of enough gunk from his job so he is posing with his bike with a cig dangling from his lip!! They werer amazing atheletes. They should do a book of just old photographs. The outfits were insane, essentially full on suits, like Sunday's wardrobe for gentlemen in the innagural race. Get this book to learn more about the TDF and the heroics of the world's greatest bike race. Highly recommended for the bicycling enthusiast.

I picked up this book after reading Lance Armstrong's autobiography, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. The text is well-written, covering all aspects of the Tour's history, and the pictures are terrific. It's inspiring to see that while current Tour riders are heroic, the men who did this 50+ years ago completed a course that was even longer, and did so with primitive equipment and without the same levels of celebrity. A fun and inspiring read.