When Pete Jordan arrives in Amsterdam to study how to make American cities more bicycle-friendly, he immediately falls in love with the city that already lives life on two wheels.
In the City of Bikes follows Pete and his new bride, Amy Joy. Despite their financial hardships and instability, Amy Joy eventually finds her own new calling as a bicycle mechanic as Pete discovers the untold history of cycling in Amsterdam. From its beginnings as an elitist pastime in the 1890s to the street-consuming craze of the 1920s, from the bicycles role in a citywide resistance to the Nazi occupation to the White Bikes of the 1960s and the bike fishermen of today, Jordan chronicles the evolution of Amsterdam’s cycling.
Part personal memoir, part history of cycling, part fascinating street-level tour of Amsterdam, In the City of Bikes is the story of a man who loves bikes – in a city that loves bikes (description from publisher)