Having been given a five-year clean bill of health, Elizabeth McGowan sets out to bicycle all 4,000 miles from America's coast to coast. She wants to help other melanoma victims, and use her many miles to raise funds for cancer research. She also wants to better understand her late father, who died of melanoma at the age of 44, when Elizabeth was just fifteen. Her long, nearly 90-day cycling trip across the U.S. continent not only showcases people...

"Cycling emerged as a sport in the late 1870s, and from the beginning, Black Americans rode alongside and raced against white competitors. Robert J. Turpin sheds light on the contributions of Black cyclists from the sport's early days through the cementing of Jim Crow laws during the Progressive Era. As Turpin shows, Black cyclists used the bicycle not only as a vehicle but as a means of social mobility--a mobility that attracted white ire. Prominent...

"Not content with tackling the Italian Alps or the route of the Tour de France, Tim Moore sets out to scale a new peak of rash over-ambition: 6,000 mile route of the old Iron Curtain on a tiny-wheeled, two-geared East German shopping bike. Asking for trouble-- and getting it-- Moore sets off from the northernmost Norwegian-Russian border at the Arctic winter's brutal height, bullying his plucky MIFA 900 through the endless sub-zero desolation of snowbound...