Bicycle

Shows how understanding the bicycle requires investigating technological history, urban planning, and social norms, as well as both natural and human law.

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

These days the bicycle often appears as an interloper in a world constructed for cars. An almost miraculous 19th-century contraption, the bicycle promises to transform our lives and the world we live in, yet its time seems always yet-to-come or long-gone-by. Jonathan Maskit takes us on an interdisciplinary ride to see what makes the bicycle a magical machine that could yet make the world a safer, greener, and more just place.

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.