Critical Mass: Bicycling's Defiant Celebration

This joyful book should be mandatory reading! Simply put, our county's oil addiction and car culture are destroying our planet, contributing to air pollution, deforestation, urban sprawl, social alienation and war, not to mention roadkill. (Did you know that cars are the number 1 cause of the Florida panther's decline?) While biodiesel should be promoted instead of gas, it really does not alleviate the majority of social ills caused by the vehicle itself, like the atomizing of people inside steel boxes or the clear-cutting of forests to make way for parking lots and strip malls. In contrast, bikes promote community, healthy living, ecological sustainability, anti-capitalism and peace. So, dump your car and hit the streets with your friends and lovers. Enjoy the sunlight on your face, the wind in your hair and the music of birds!

[Another reviewer] did not review this book; he is only stating his closed-minded opinion about its content and its message. He has obviuosly never participated in a Critical Mass ride, his uninformed opinion about the people that do participate is just that, and I doubt the time he spends on his bicycle as 'an avid cyclist' occurs anywhere near the crowded streets of a large urban city in America. Although some of the writing in this book is a little rough, as a result of being a collection of many short essays by untrained writers, this book does an excellent job of capturing the spirit and energy of Critical Mass rides throughout the world, through the eyes and words of participants. Think of Critical Mass as the civil rights movement for urban cyclists, who are just plain tired of being threatened and endangered by rude and inconsiderate motorists, discriminated against by politicians, transportation planners, engineers and bureaucrats, the police and the entrenched dinosaur known as American car culture, which strangles and disfigures America's public spaces with noise, pollution, and violent death, and whose ever-increasing consumption of fossil fuel is driving us to war in the Middle East. Critical Mass is urban bicyclists reclaiming America's streets and other public spaces from the stranglehold of the SUV and the automobile in what is probably the largest civil disobedience movement in this country since the southern civil rights movement and the anti-war protests of the l960s. If you won't ride your bicycle in the city because you don't feel safe riding in traffic, read this book, find out the time and location of the nearest Critical Mass ride, get on your bicycle and bring a friend with a bicycle, and reclaim your public streets from the tyranny and hegemony of the automobile.