Is cycling one of your passions? Are you a cycling enthusiast? Here is a selection of 10 books dedicated to cycling in all its meanings: stories of great Champions and ordinary people, books for those who love to travel by bike or to be inspired by pedaling.
Happy reading!
THE LEGENDS OF CYCLING (Beppe Conti) – Diarkos
From Gerbi to Pantani, thirty portraits of champions who made the history of professional cycling told by journalist and writer Beppe Conti. From Giovanni Gerbi, the “Red Devil of Monferrato” and winner of the first Giro di Lombardia in 1905 to Marco Pantani, via Girardengo, Gimondi, Coppi, Bartali, Anquetil, Hinault, Chiappucci, Bugno and many others. The 20th century told through the exploits, frailties, victories and defeats of great athletes who became legends.
THE RUGGENT YEARS OF ALFONSINA STRADA (Paolo Facchinetti) – Ediclo Editore
Alfonsina Morini, married Strada, born in Castelfranco Emilia in 1891, daughter of farmers, cyclist, indeed “Devil in a skirt.” In 1924 she participated, the first and only woman, in the Giro d’Italia, where she completed four stages before being ousted from the official classification but not from the Giro, thanks to the enormous popularity that, stage after stage, she had managed to gain with the public. In later years she would be denied participation in the Giro but Alfonsina would continue to participate and ride in other competitions; in 1938 also won the women’s record for the hour, with 35.28 km. A pioneer!
SEX AND THE BIKE (Walter Bernardi) – Ediciclo Editore
If you are wondering…no, this is not a pedal version of the Kamasutra! In these pages, Professor Bernardi — a professor of philosophy at many universities including Florence, Lecce and Siena — recounts the erotic exploits of professional cyclists in the postwar period, in contrast to the classical image that wanted the cyclist as chaste, ascetic and devoted (almost) exclusively to cycling…
THE HAPPY BIKE (AA.VV) – Ediciclo Editore
Five authors – a psychologist, a journalist, a cultural organizer, an urban planner, and an educator – to tell, through ten stories, the conquest of Great little portions of happiness thanks to the bicycle. A book that will put a smile on your face – right from the illustration on the Cover – and help you feel better through your cycling, too!
BICYTHERAPY (Milla Brollo) – Bicycle Publisher
The subtitle reads “On a journey in search of balance “and it could not have been more apt. A journey, first inner than physical, to re-seek that physical and mental balance that, by her own admission, the author lacked: over 50, overweight and suffering from type 2 diabetes, a job in Psychiatry in contact with fragile subjects but now “drained” and perpetually at fault with herself. And so Milla Brollo sets off from Gemona del Friuli toward Lampedusa riding her e-bike. A journey of over 2,000 km across Italy, filling his eyes with beauty and meeting many people marked by mental disorders. The result is therapy-actually, bicytherapy!
ZEN BIKES (Juan Carlos Kreimer) – UTET
The harmonious gesture of the moving legs, the hands gripping the handlebars, the gaze projected forward–a state of peace and full consciousness that in Zen is called mindfulness. In this book, the author explains how bicycling can become a tool that enables us to reach a much richer and higher state of mind than we might think, analyzing every aspect of the correlation between mindfulness and bicycling.
THE MOST BEAUTIFUL HIGHWAYS IN ITALY (Davide Cassani with Beppe Conti) – Rizzoli
“Every road you take will always be uphill and against the wind” is an old road cycling adage. Because if races are won (even) in sprints, it is on the climbs that the feat is done. The CT of the Italian men’s national team is – literally – back in the saddle to pedal Italy’s most beautiful climbs, telling all the secrets for tackling them at their best. Instead, Beppe Conti narrates the exploits of the Champions who nurtured the myth on those climbs.
PEDALING IN THE SILENCE OF ICE (Omar Di Felice) – BUR
From introverted, awkward child to ultracycling athlete, long-distance cycling. Omar Di Felice recounts his 2018 feat (1,300 km percorsi on the Artic Highway and pedaled during the winter season) and the narrative becomes the pretext to tell about his way of experiencing cycling, the emotions he feels at each push of pedal in the middle of nowhere, the difficulties, the satisfactions experienced in the saddle.
BIKE LIFE (Tristan Bogaard & Belén Castello) – Rizzoli
“The art of discovering the world by pedaling” reads the squeal on the Cover… and here the world is seen through the eyes of Tristan and Belén, a couple in life and work (both are photographers) who through their shots show us the places wonderful around the planet, some unknown and secret, to which they add trivia and anecdotes of what is now not just a passion but a way of life. A book to fill your eyes with beauty.
THE SPORT OF DOPING (Alessandro Donati) – Gruppo Abele Editions
One cannot not talk about cycling without mentioning the doping phenomenon. And if you think it only affects “top” or professional athletes…. well, you’re wrong. Alessandro Donati, a former coach and sports executive, starts from his personal and direct experience to draw a lucid, truthful, and disconcerting analysis of the phenomenon and how, by now, the use of illicit drugs or procedures is more widespread than people think and involves even and especially practitioners at the amateur level.