THE WHEELS OF CHANCE

THE WHEELS OF CHANCE

Author: H. G. Wells

Publisher: e-artnow

Published: 2017-12-06

Total Pages: 187

ISBN-13: 8027235030

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The Wheels of Chance is an early comic novel about an August 1895 cycling holiday. The Wheels of Chance was written at the height of the cycling craze (1890–1905), when practical, comfortable bicycles first became widely and cheaply available and before the rise of the automobile. The advent of the bicycle stirred sudden and profound changes in the social life of England. Even the working class could travel substantial distances, quickly and cheaply, and the very idea of travelling for pleasure became a possibility for thousands of people for the first time. This new freedom affected many. It began to weaken the rigid English class structure and it gave an especially powerful boost to the existing movement toward female emancipation. Wells explored these social changes in his story. Herbert George Wells (1866–1946), known as H. G. Wells, was a prolific English writer in many genres, including the novel, history, politics, and social commentary, and textbooks and rules for war games.


Heft on Wheels

Heft on Wheels

Author: Mike Magnuson

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2005-05-24

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 1400052416

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Take one very large guy. Add booze, cigarettes, and an extreme amount of junk food. Mix in a wry, self-effacing wit. Throw in a bike. The result? Heft on Wheels, a potently funny look at turning your life around, one insanely unrealistic goal at a time. Not that long ago, Mike Magnuson was a self-described lummox with a bicycle. In the space of three months, he lost seventy-five pounds, quit smoking, stopped drinking, and morphed from the big guy at the back of the pack into a lean, mean cycling machine. Today, Mike is a 175-pound athlete competing in some of the most difficult one-day racing events in America. This irreverent and inspiring memoir charts every hilarious detail of his transformation, from the horrors of skin-tight XXL biking shorts to the miseries of nicotine withdrawal. Heft on Wheels is an unforgettable book about getting from one place to another, in more ways than one.


Parnassus on Wheels

Parnassus on Wheels

Author: Christopher Morley

Publisher: Standard Ebooks

Published: 2017-11-02T21:43:32Z

Total Pages: 127

ISBN-13:

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Parnassus on Wheels is Christopher Morley’s first novel, and the first of two written from a woman’s perspective, the second being The Haunted Bookshop, this book’s sequel. Parnassus on Wheels was inspired by a novel by David Grayson (pseudonym of Ray Stannard Baker) called The Friendly Road, and is prefaced by a letter to Grayson from Morley. The word “Parnassus” from the title refers to “Mount Parnassus,” the home of the Muses in Greek mythology. The protagonist is 39-year-old Helen McGill, who lives on a farm owned by her brother Andrew. The book’s Parnassus is a large, horse-drawn van owned by Roger Mifflin, out of which he buys and sells books while traveling around the New England countryside. Mifflin arrives at the McGill farm, looking to sell the business to someone interested in the noble cause of spreading literature to the common man. Helen is at first turned off by Mr. Mifflin, but decides on a whim that an escape from her dreadful farm—and her insufferable brother Andrew—is just what she needs. She buys the Parnassus, and embarks on exactly the type of adventure she had hoped for. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.


The Wheels of Chance by H. G. Wells - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)

The Wheels of Chance by H. G. Wells - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)

Author: H. G. Wells

Publisher: Delphi Classics

Published: 2017-07-17

Total Pages: 136

ISBN-13: 1786565617

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This eBook features the unabridged text of ‘The Wheels of Chance’ from the bestselling edition of ‘The Complete Works of H. G. Wells’. Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. The Delphi Classics edition of Wells includes original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of the author, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily. eBook features: * The complete unabridged text of ‘The Wheels of Chance’ * Beautifully illustrated with images related to Wells’s works * Individual contents table, allowing easy navigation around the eBook * Excellent formatting of the textPlease visit www.delphiclassics.com to learn more about our wide range of titles


Culture on Two Wheels

Culture on Two Wheels

Author: Jeremy Withers

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2016-07-01

Total Pages: 363

ISBN-13: 0803290454

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Bicycles have more cultural identities than many realize, functioning not only as literal vehicles in a text but also as “vehicles” for that text’s themes, ideas, and critiques. In the late nineteenth century the bicycle was seen as a way for the wealthy urban elite to reconnect with nature and for women to gain a measure of personal freedom, while during World War II it became a utilitarian tool of the French Resistance and in 1970s China stood for wealth and modernization. Lately it has functioned variously as the favored ideological steed of environmentalists, a means of community bonding and aesthetic self-expression in hip hop, and the ride of choice for bike messenger–idolizing urban hipsters. Culture on Two Wheels analyzes the shifting cultural significance of the bicycle by examining its appearances in literary, musical, and cinematic works spanning three continents and more than 125 years of history. Bringing together essays by a variety of cyclists and scholars with myriad angles of approach, this collection highlights the bicycle’s flexibility as a signifier and analyzes the appearance of bicycles in canonical and well-known texts such as Samuel Beckett’s modernist novel Molloy, the Oscar-winning film Breaking Away, and various Stephen King novels and stories, as well as in lesser-known but equally significant texts, such as the celebrated Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Sacrifice and Elizabeth Robins Pennell’s nineteenth-century travelogue A Canterbury Pilgrimage, the latter of which traces the route of Chaucer’s pilgrims via bicycle. Listen to an interview with the author.