Do you love bicycles? Do you love them enough that you'd be excited to learn about the history of bicycles, and how they have been crafted, designed and improved upon over the century? If you answered on both fronts (more importantly the second then you'll really geta kick out of Jan Heine and Jean-Pierre Praderes' The Golden Age Of Handbuilt Bicycles. Coming in at 165 pages, this hefty hard- back tome details the history and evolution ofhandbuilt bicycles, and how these devel- opments shaped the modern bicycle your hipster friends use to commute to work today. The book is divided into numerous parts, each part detailing the big devel opments in the world of bicycle crafting. Within each partis a brief article explaining the significant events happening in each time period, followed by pictures of iconic bicycles used at the time. The book's clean, minimalistic design also helps make the bicycles -some of which are over 50 years old that much more detailed, and you really can see exactly how the mechanisms and designs have changed over time.The modern bicycle made its first appearance in the closing years of the 1880s, when French writer Paul de Vivie (better known for his pen name velocio) began advocating ridingbicycles over long distances "for fun" Velocio, a passionate lo of bicycles, also owned a bicycle shop, where he was known to make various modi fications on his bicycles. His passion for modifying bicycles, coupled with France's mountainous geography, inspired Velocio to create the "bi chain" mechanism, prim- itive version of the multi-gear bicycles we see today. The extensive crafting and modifying of bicycles didn't become widespread until much later in 1934, when the first "Con- cours de Machines" was first held, a contest in which bicycle craftsmen from all over the country would bring their modified bicycles for a "technical test" of sorts. Points were given for factors such as weight, derailleurs and brakes, to name a few. These annual contests allowed many aspiring bicycle craftsmen to show their skill, which paved the way for many new shops with varying designs and functions, which jump-started the golden age of bicycling.