Three cycling books

I'm a reader. Not just blogs, but actual real life dead tree books. I even spend my own money on them. I've recently purchased three very different books about cycling.

Cycling Science by Max Glaskin is a book, that, were it larger would seem like a coffee table book. It's very cleanly designed with interesting graphics and a lot of white space. Each subject is exactly two facing pages long, no matter how complicated or simple it is. You get a header, a snappy lead in, a graphic or two and a short explanation. Nothing goes into a ton of depth, but that makes for an easy breezy read. It could work as a cyclist's bathroom reader.  It's pretty much footnote and citation free, so who knows where these facts come from.

Edit: It seems I missed the 150-odd citations detailed in five pages at the back of the book. I guess that's why I'm not a professional book reviewer. 

I enjoyed this book, but there wasn't much new in it for me. But then I'm an old guy and a compulsive reader who's been reading stuff like this forever. 

The author says he's continuing to gather new material about cycling scence, tweeting daily about it as @cyclinscence1 and beginning to blog at cyclingandscience.com. Cool! I know I'll be adding it to my RSS reader.

Cyclepedia by Michael Embacher: I found this at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It's a collection of beautifully shot photos presented in no particular order. I'm guessing, but I think it originated in Germany and was translated for the American market. Most of the bikes are in the author's collection, so this is really a work of love. Many of the bikes are unusual European historical models I've never heard of, which makes it a lot of fun. The photographs are extremely well done. I've enjoyed just picking it up, randomly choosing a page and oogling a bike.

The Secret Race. If you love cycling, Tyler Hamilton's story will break your heart. Hamilton is hard on Lance Armstrong, but just as hard on himself. It provides a look inside the Armstrong doping years in more detail than you may be able to handle. This whole book has a painful ring of sad truth, but it's well written and fascinating, perhaps like a brilliantly written description of a train wreck. I'm glad I read it, and in many ways I enjoyed it. But it left me very sad for Hamilton and cycling.