Herlihy, David V.

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Herlihy, David V.

PERSONAL:

Hobbies and other interests: Bicycling.

ADDRESSES:

Home— Hull, MA.

CAREER:

Historian, author.

AWARDS, HONORS:

McNair History Award, Wheelmen, 1999; Award for Excellence in the History of Science, Association of American Publishers, 2004, and Sally Hacker Prize, Society for the History of Technology, 2005, both for Bicycle: The History.

WRITINGS:

Bicycle: The History, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS:

A former member of the Harvard Cycling Club, David V. Herlihy is fascinated by everything that has to do with bicycles. Now a historian by profession, he took his passion and transformed it into his debut work,Bicycle: The History. Not simply a staid history of the origins of the bicycle and its early years,Bicycle explores the many effects bicycles have had on society and culture, taking the story into modern times. While discussing how the bicycle, or velocipede as it was called, was invented in 1817, Herlihy reveals that it saw a brief heyday in the 1890s. Furthermore, "the bicycle elevated the status of women," as Vera Laska pointed out in her International Social Science Review article about the book. "It facilitated a woman's movement from home or factory to the outdoors, or to visit neighbors or socialize with friends, thus making her life more interesting and enriched beyond housework. It also made her life less dependent on her husband." Herlihy explains how the bicycle helped make the dominance of the automobile possible, too. The Good Road Movement of the 1890s was an effort by bicyclists to improve the country's roadways so that biking would be less hazardous. By paving many roads, however, they made conditions ideal for automobile travel, which soon replaced the bicycle in popularity.

Herlihy also goes into detail about the role of the bicycle in modern society. Bikes saw a renewal in their popularity in the 1970s, which instigated a movement to have bicycle paths constructed for the safety of their users. He comments, furthermore, on the use of bikes in tourism, how they have become part of the health movement, and how they are used in mountain biking and in extreme sports. "Yet, for history buffs, some of the most interesting pages of Herlihy's book are the ones about the predecessors of today's streamlined bicycle," commented Laska, who asserted: "All in all, this is a delightful romp in the history of a pleasant topic, loaded with otherwise unavailable information and richly illustrated, written with dabs of humor, and reliable in the knowledge of its author. It will fascinate bicycle fans and also scholars and students interested in the development of social attitudes, attires, and morals." Other reviewers complimented Herlihy on a well-researched book that is filled with some 200 photos, many in color. Library Journal critic Christina L. Hennessey, for one, called Bicycle an "extraordinarily researched work," and Edward Korey described the book as "immensely absorbing" in the New York Times Book Review.