Four wheels bad, two wheels good.

It's now virtuous for people to ride bicycles in the city, as well as in the country, so one can't argue with the timing of Michelle Mulder's Pedal It!: How Bicycles Are Changing The World (Orca $19.95).

Bikes have been changing lives since the early 1800s. When bicycles were first mass produced, suffragists soon recognized the potential for solo transportation to serve as a catalyst for the emancipation of women. Herself an avid cyclist, the great singer Sarah Bernhardt said, "The bicycle is on the way to transforming our way of life more deeply than you might think. All these young women and girls who are devouring space are refusing domestic family life.";

American's leading feminist in her day, Susan B. Anthony wrote, "I think [the bicycle] has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It provides a woman with a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. The moment she takes her seat she knows she can't get into harm unless she gets off her bicycle, and away she goes, the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.";

But women represent only half a mankind; Mulder's overview looks at the whole enchilada, showing multiple uses. At a bicycle-powered movie theatre in Vilnius, Lithuania, for example, volunteer pedalers power the projector. When they get tired, they ring the bell, and another movie watcher takes over. "These days,"; Mulder writes, "bicycles represent not wealth or poverty but good thinking.";

Cargo bikes can carry enormous loads. Bikes in the developing world are being used to power computers or sharpen knives. And two-wheelers can be remarkably durable. After she bought her first bike at age fifteen, Mulder rode it for almost twenty years, including a bike trip across Canada. Then she donated it to Recyclistas, a Victoria organization that gives new life to old parts. "I like to imagine pieces of my old bicycle riding around Victoria and maybe even retracing my steps across the country,"; she says.

[BCBW 2013]