Take a lively look at women's history from aboard a bicycle, which granted females the freedom of mobility and helped empower women's liberation. Through vintage photographs, advertisements, cartoons, and songs, Wheels of Change transports young readers to bygone eras to see how women used the bicycle to improve their lives. Witty in tone and scrapbook-like in presentation, the book deftly covers early (and comical) objections, influence on fashion, and impact on social change inspired by the bicycle, which, according to Susan B. Anthony, "has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world."
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Take a lively look at women's history from aboard a bicycle, which granted females the freedom of mobility and helped empower women's liberation. Through vintage photographs, advertisements, cartoons, and songs, Wheels of Change transports young readers to bygone eras to see how women used the bicycle to improve their lives. Witty in tone and scrapbook-like in presentation, the book deftly covers early (and comical) objections, influence on fashion, and impact on social change inspired by the bicycle, which, according to Susan B. Anthony, "has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world."
Q&A with Sue Macy, Author of Wheels of Change
Q: Who taught you how to ride a bike? What did it feel like when you took your first one for a spin?
A: My dad taught me how to ride a two-wheeler. (He later taught me to drive a car.) I remember him taking me to a paved, pretty empty parking lot at a nearby park. It was a great feeling to be able to move and balance without training wheels, but I was also worried about falling. I don’t think I did fall, though.
Q: Why are bikes still important to women?
A: I think that Leah Missbach Day does a great job in the foreword to Wheels of Change of explaining how bicycles are still important to one population of women--those in developing countries who are able to increase their mobility astronomically with the bicycles they received through World Bicycle Relief. But today in the U.S., bicycles are important to everybody. They allow people to do errands without using fossil fuels, to get great cardiovascular exercise, to see their surroundings in a whole new way. My neighborhood isn’t great for cycling--too much traffic and too many hills--but I try to ride at least once a week in the spring, summer, and fall, usually stopping at a nearby farmers' market to restock on fruits and vegetables. It’s a healthy way to live.
Q: What’s your favorite thing about the very first bicycle models?
A: I love the ordinaries, which weren’t the first models but rather the ones that started appearing in the 1870s, with the very large front wheel and the smaller real wheel. I love the look of them; they’re such a wonderful evocation of a time in history. When you see one, you’re automatically transported back to that time period; but I wouldn’t want to ride one. When I was visiting Dottie Batho, who contributed more than 20 images to Wheels of Change, I tried to hoist myself onto the seat of the ordinary that she has in her living room and I was scared to do even that. It was her late husband’s bike and she said the first time he rode it, he fell head first over the front wheel and broke both his wrists!
Q: How is the bicycle going to change the future?
A: I really do think more and more people will go back to the bicycle as a replacement for cars and other types of local transportation and hopefully, towns and cities will start designating more space for cyclists to ride. The efforts of the Portland, Oregon, city government to make bicycling an integral part of daily life have been well-publicized, but even New York City has been installing 50 miles of bike lanes per year with the goal of having an 1,800-mile network of bike lanes by 2030. Cycling is a great way to get around and a great way to keep healthy.
Q: What are kids going to love most about this book?
A: Wheels of Change is a lively book full of awesome characters and its design is very appealing. I love the stories of the bicycle racers, most of whom had been lost to history until now. Their bravura and tenacity was pretty amazing. I think kids also will love the images--especially the bicycle artifacts from the 1800s--because they will help kids visual what the period was all about. Plus, there are news clips about female cyclists in every chapter, reproduced verbatim, and some of them are wild. My favorite is “Don’ts for Women Wheelers” on page 38.
Q: How has fashion evolved around the bicycle? Do you think dresses and high heels impede a woman’s ability to feel completely free?
A: The advent of the bicycles in the late 1800s caused a fashion revolution for women because it made the need for comfortable, safe clothing for cyclists crucial. And once women started casting aside corsets and other oppressive fashion architecture, they realized there was much to be said for simpler clothing. I completely understand this evolution because, as a writer who works from home, I go for comfort over fashion most of the time. High heels are great for elongating one’s legs, but they’re a pain when it comes to moving freely or quickly!
Q&A with Sue Macy, Author of Wheels of Change
Q: Who taught you how to ride a bike? What did it feel like when you took your first one for a spin?
A: My dad taught me how to ride a two-wheeler. (He later taught me to drive a car.) I remember him taking me to a paved, pretty empty parking lot at a nearby park. It was a great feeling to be able to move and balance without training wheels, but I was also worried about falling. I don’t think I did fall, though.
Q: Why are bikes still important to women?
A: I think that Leah Missbach Day does a great job in the foreword to Wheels of Change of explaining how bicycles are still important to one population of women--those in developing countries who are able to increase their mobility astronomically with the bicycles they received through World Bicycle Relief. But today in the U.S., bicycles are important to everybody. They allow people to do errands without using fossil fuels, to get great cardiovascular exercise, to see their surroundings in a whole new way. My neighborhood isn’t great for cycling--too much traffic and too many hills--but I try to ride at least once a week in the spring, summer, and fall, usually stopping at a nearby farmers' market to restock on fruits and vegetables. It’s a healthy way to live.
Q: What’s your favorite thing about the very first bicycle models?
A: I love the ordinaries, which weren’t the first models but rather the ones that started appearing in the 1870s, with the very large front wheel and the smaller real wheel. I love the look of them; they’re such a wonderful evocation of a time in history. When you see one, you’re automatically transported back to that time period; but I wouldn’t want to ride one. When I was visiting Dottie Batho, who contributed more than 20 images to Wheels of Change, I tried to hoist myself onto the seat of the ordinary that she has in her living room and I was scared to do even that. It was her late husband’s bike and she said the first time he rode it, he fell head first over the front wheel and broke both his wrists!
Q: How is the bicycle going to change the future?
A: I really do think more and more people will go back to the bicycle as a replacement for cars and other types of local transportation and hopefully, towns and cities will start designating more space for cyclists to ride. The efforts of the Portland, Oregon, city government to make bicycling an integral part of daily life have been well-publicized, but even New York City has been installing 50 miles of bike lanes per year with the goal of having an 1,800-mile network of bike lanes by 2030. Cycling is a great way to get around and a great way to keep healthy.
Q: What are kids going to love most about this book?
A: Wheels of Change is a lively book full of awesome characters and its design is very appealing. I love the stories of the bicycle racers, most of whom had been lost to history until now. Their bravura and tenacity was pretty amazing. I think kids also will love the images--especially the bicycle artifacts from the 1800s--because they will help kids visual what the period was all about. Plus, there are news clips about female cyclists in every chapter, reproduced verbatim, and some of them are wild. My favorite is “Don’ts for Women Wheelers” on page 38.
Q: How has fashion evolved around the bicycle? Do you think dresses and high heels impede a woman’s ability to feel completely free?
A: The advent of the bicycles in the late 1800s caused a fashion revolution for women because it made the need for comfortable, safe clothing for cyclists crucial. And once women started casting aside corsets and other oppressive fashion architecture, they realized there was much to be said for simpler clothing. I completely understand this evolution because, as a writer who works from home, I go for comfort over fashion most of the time. High heels are great for elongating one’s legs, but they’re a pain when it comes to moving freely or quickly!
From Booklist
Macy revisits a topic she touched on in her excellent Winning Ways: A Photohistory of American Women in Sports (1996) in this engaging look at the emancipating impact that bikes had on late-nineteenth-century U.S. women. The eye-catching chapters, filled with archival images of women perched sidesaddle on their �steel steeds� and racing furiously in bloomers on velocipedes, zero in on the profound ways that bicycles subverted traditional notions of femininity; according to one wary social commentator, �The bicycle is the devil�s advance agent morally and physically in thousands of instances.� A veteran nonfiction writer, Macy seamlessly weaves together research, direct quotes (sourced in an appendix that includes a time line and resource list), and historical overviews that put the facts into context, while sidebars expand on related topics, from �cycling songs� to standout female cyclists, including trailblazers Marie Curie and Annie Oakley. The narrow focus on cycling will open up broader thought and discussion about women�s history, making this a strong, high-interest choice for both classroom and personal reading�for adults, too. Grades 6-9. --Gillian Engberg
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great book for the young cyclist, and anyone who loves bikes,
This review is from: Wheels of Change: How Women Rode the Bicycle to Freedom (With a Few Flat Tires Along the Way) (Hardcover)
This is a beautiful book with many great vintage images, and short well researched vignettes that celebrate women and womans history through the lens of the early years of bicycling 1860-1910. The book was written with the young adult reader in mind, but given that this is the first book of its kind, i.e., a book on the history of women in cycling, it will be enjoyed by women of all ages, and everyone else who is fascinated by the historical place of the bicycle in our culture.
It will be a keeper on my bookshelf!
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Educational, amsuing, wonderful to look at and easy to read!,
By Mark McGinty "Author, "The Cigar Maker"" (Minneapolis) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Wheels of Change: How Women Rode the Bicycle to Freedom (With a Few Flat Tires Along the Way) (Hardcover)
The celebration of International Women's Day 2011, a global day to recognize the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future, is perhaps a perfect time to look at how the bicycle changed women's lives in the late 19th Century and helped them ride to freedom. Sue Macy and National Geographic bring us Wheels of Change, an excellent full-color book on the history of the bicycle's impact on society and the lives of women. To men, the bicycle was a toy but to women it was "a steed upon which they rode to a new world."
Filled with black and white photographs, full color paintings and advertisements from the day and a wonderful eye-catching design, Wheels of Change reads more like a magazine than a history book. Your eyes flash across the page, from an anecdotal narrative to the vivid pictures inserted seemingly on every page, to the poems, songs and newspaper articles from the day, all celebrating (and often times challenging) how the women of the time embraced the bicycle. But history it is. Rich in detail, both educational and humorous, with a tone that is always upbeat and positive. These glossy pages are a reminder of where we've been, a reflection on the present. This is the type of book that leaves you enlightened by the past, optimistic about the world, and empowered for the future. Should we expect anything less from National Geographic? The bicycle was not always just for transportation, exercise or leisure. To this day, in some parts of the world, the bicycle brings children to school, transports goods to the market, takes the sick to clinics, and imports medicine to places that need it. It saves lives. And in the late 1800's and early 1900's, the bicycle saved women from the constraints they had always faced. The book is filled with amusing stories about the female celebrity cyclists of the day, lessons on cycling slang, bicycling songs and poems, and advertisements portraying how women embraced the bicycle. From the early velocipede to the rubber-tired steel-framed high-wheeler, to the modern version with two wheels of equal size and tires filled with compressed air, we learn the evolution of the bicycle along with the evolution of fashion, industry and advertising. As women switched from skirts to bloomers, and riding become more popular, the consumer culture reacted and soon repair shops were opened, manufacturers began making bicycle bells and lights, bike paths were constructed and bicycles were modified to suit a female rider. Did you know women once rode side-saddled with both legs on the same side of the bicycle? This reviewer didn't. We learn about Annie Oakley, who could ride her bike no-handed while shooting at targets, and Belva Lockwood the first women to appear on an official ballot for U.S. President who rode a tricycle to work. Then there's a great story about Annie Cohen Kopchovsky, who attempted to ride her bicycle around the world in order to settle a bet....and get this: she didn't know how to ride a bicycle! And there was another catch - she was challenged to start with $0 and return with $5,000, a fortune for that day and age. Did she make it? How much money did she raise? It's worth picking up Wheels of Change to find out! Like nearly every social craze, cycling by females met the usual opposition. Denounced as the downfall of women's health and morality, the medical community quickly recognized the benefits to health but warned women: no racing! And did the women of the day pay attention? Of course not. We are rewarded with a wonderful section on female bicycle racing and how they used to race on an indoor track in front of thousands of spectators (mostly women). In an effort to settle the growing popularity of the bicycle, The Omaha Daily Bee presented women with a list of bicycling Don'ts. Don't carry a flask. Don't stop at road houses. Don't wear clothes that don't fit (this one still applies!) and most importantly: Don't powder your face on the road. The worries over women's health and detriment to religious devotion were unfounded and the bicycle gave women increased independence, better health, freedom from restrictive clothing and even helped them gain the right to vote. But don't take it from me. Sue Macy's Wheels of Change is diligently researched, flawlessly designed and expertly executed. A wonderful book on all counts. Mark McGinty is the award winning author of The Cigar Maker and Elvis and the Blue Moon Conspiracy. His work has appeared in Cigar City Magazine and La Gaceta.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Don't let the Young Adult Title dissuade you, this is a great book,
This review is from: Wheels of Change: How Women Rode the Bicycle to Freedom (With a Few Flat Tires Along the Way) (Hardcover)
This is a great book both for it's subject and the pictures depicting independant female cyclists. In her introduction, Sue says "Wheels of Change looks at how the bicycle took America by storm in the 1880's and '90's and especially at the ways in which it changed women's lives". The book is written for young adults, but as a 51 year old I fully enjoyed it, the history of cycling (which I already knew, but was happy to see in print again), the history of women in cycling (something forgotten to history, when atheletic women were religated to the circus or freak shows). Also, Sue writes about other ground-breaking women such as Frances Johnston, a photographer of five presidents, who apparently donned a false mustache to work in the world of men at that time. The book is an easy but compelling read, complete with many pictures of the era.
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