Customer Reviews

Le Tour: A History of the Tour De France

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Quite simply, this is the best written, most entertaining book I have read about cycling (I've read about 30 cycling books to date). I was at first quite reluctant to purchase this book; how exciting could a historical recounting of a bike race be? The answer is VERY, if it's written by Geoffrey Wheatcroft.

This author's success comes not from being a die-hard cycling author, but a masterful story teller who interweaves the colorful personalities who participated in Le Tour de France with the social, interpersonal and political impacts of the different eras. This book is a must-read for cycling fans & history-buffs alike. (I can imagine passing-along this book to my father-in-law, who has no interest in cycling but loves reading about the histories of WW1&2.)

My only slight, picky complaint with the book is that the author uses occasional French phrases without translating them. (Note: the phrases are non-cycling specific, & it would be fun to expand my French beyond "peloton", "bidon" & "maillot jaune").

In short, if you love cycling or The Tour, enjoy reading about history, or hearing a well-told story, you owe it to yourself to read this book. Enjoy!!

Along the lines of the books by Thompson and Dauncey, but with less of a scholarly feel to it, Wheatcroft's book combines his interest in the Tour de France with a close look at how the race has left its impact on the six-sided country -- and vice versa.

Instead of researching the Tour in historical journals and periodicals, Wheatcroft, an admitted non-expert on the race, gets out there and gives us a felt for what it's really like to experience the race from the viewpoint of the of the people from all walks of French life.

I think the reason I like this book so much is because, after having studied the race itself closely for more than a decade, I needed to see how it fit into the bigger pcture. Once you've read up on all the Tours over the years, you may find yourself in the boat.

I really enjoyed this book. From the eccentric, despotic Henri Desgrange (founder of the Tour de France) to riders such as Merckx, Poulidor, Hinault, Bobet -- and other tales from past Tours de France, you get a very good idea of why the Tour has become part of France's patrimony. Wheatcroft does a marvelous job conveying to people who are new to the Tour and people who've been watching it for years, why it is an obsession for many and why no other sporting event in the world comes close. I love Wheatcroft's descriptions of the French countryside, French manners and food. This is the best book on the Tour.

While this books delivers great antidotes in French, it lacks Je ne sais quoi, perhaps readability in English? This is not to say that, I don't enjoy certain quips in another language dispersed here and there, with that tongue in cheek British humor, ala Monty Python that we have grown to enjoy. Thus said, this book lacks fluidity, and was at times hard to follow and even harder to digest. Le Tour could have been better written, it certainly doesn't lack material given the heroic stamina and personalities that it obvious takes to complete in "the gretest race". The Tour de France, historically, is not lacking in characters and memorable escapades, which has made it both famous and infamous. My opinion is that Mr. Wheatcroft is just boring, perhaps better suited to write about Franco gastronomic specialties, which in this book he passionatly mentions from time to time, rather than the excitment of the tour, which happens to be the subject.
I read through the whole thing wishing that their was another book that could deliver the excitment of the Tour, without the boorishness and forced intellectual humor that ends up being overly dry and overly articulated. On a positive note, the word glossary (race specific terms) at the end of the book was a nice touch as was the pictures in the middle section.