Tips & Reviews

Love and War in the Apennines by Eric Newby There is no scarcity of personal memoirs of World War II. Yet Eric Newby’s narrative of war, escape, love, and peasant farmers in Italy’s Apennine mountains in 1944 has lasted thirty… Read full article

Al Young, Shifting Gears, My Global Bike Odyssey (including an interview with the author) Shifting Gears: My Global Bike Odyssey by Al Young   Trafford Publishing, Victoria, 2005 (See the end of the review for details on how to purchase… Read full article

Too Much Tuscan Sun (Confessions of a Chianti Tour Guide) by Dario Castagno Anyone with a foot in two cultures and fluency in two languages is a lucky person. This describes Dario Castagno, author of “Too Much Tuscan Sun.” Born… Read full article

Provence by Lawrence Durrell Lawrence Durrell belongs to a group of travel writers who go back to the British expatriates of the early and mid-20th century. He lived most of his life in the Mediterranean region and has left a… Read full article

Read Any Good Books Lately? We usually try to make sure our book reviews have at least something to do with cycling, or hiking, or the places we visit and their history. But that’s not all we read! At a… Read full article

Beyond Lance   Though I may not be Lance Armstrong’s number one fan, I’m up there. I’ve followed his career since 1990, and I knew of him as a promising young US cyclist before he was diagnosed with testicular cancer.… Read full article

Songbirds, Truffles, and Wolves (An American Naturalist in Italy) by Gary Paul Nabhan Colin Fletcher, one of the great walkers of the 20th century (The Man Who Walked Through Time and The Complete Walker) advised his readers to find something… Read full article

Heft on Wheels: A Field Guide to Doing a 180 by Mike Magnuson Heft on Wheels makes no secret of its subject matter. On the front, we have a photo of author Mike Magnuson, naked, obese and miserable riding his… Read full article

On Italian Politics, Landscapes and Two Movies about the Po Valley The Tree of Wooden Clogs (L’Albero degli Zoccoli)  by Ermanno Olmi, 1978 1900 (Novecento) by Bernardo Bertolucci, 1976 I’ve been observing Italy since 1966 when I first visited this… Read full article

The Tour de France Companion by Bob Roll Bob Roll’s Nuts, Bolts and Spokes on the famous Tour This is a great book, just out, for those of us who haven’t had time to follow the Tour de France every year… Read full article

To the Ends of the Earth by Paul Theroux One of my favorite things about airports is visiting their bookstores. I like to wander among the cramped aisles in search of something to read during the long hours passed crossing… Read full article

Giving Good Weight: Unmasking Food Writer John McPhee My all time favorite food essayist is John McPhee. This may come as a surprise, mainly because McPhee writes about so many things (his interests are even more eclectic than mine, it… Read full article

Movie Review The Third Man (1949) Produced by Carol Reed, Screenplay by Graham Greene Starring Orson Welles, Trevor Howard, Joseph Cotton, and Alida Valli There is no better reminder and introduction to the history of Austria in mid-20th century than… Read full article

Timeline by Michael Crichton I first visited Costa Rica in March of 1993 and I did so by bicycle. I can still picture my ride at the end of Arenal Lake after a long, beautiful day with the lake’s namesake… Read full article

2005 Race Companion by Bob Roll and Dan Koeppel A year ago, we reviewed the first edition of this fine introduction to The Race. Rick offered this opinion:   Avid fans… will find most of this old hat. But those… Read full article