"In The Art of Cycling, James Hibbard dissects how a bike ride can affect our thoughts and emotions, how it parallels the trials and joys we face in life, and why someone might pursue a career in bike racing." --The Wall Street Journal
"Cycling is only the top layer of Hibbard's multilayer work of visceral philosophy, a work that draws on insights from Nietzsche, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, T.S. Eliot, Dostoevsky, and many others. From the pains and strains of athletic pursuits to the hyper-competitive mire of academia, Hibbard shows how all the detours and dead-ends in life, when self-doubt and depression take hold, can lift us into an inexpressible intimacy with existence, where mind, body, and world shed their painful separateness. The Art of Cycling is a philosophical memoir that truly embodies the wisdom of Dostoevsky, expressed through Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov, that we should love life more than the meaning of life."-- Jonathan van Belle, co-author of Henry at Work: Thoreau on Making a Living
"When you 'draft' in cycling, you tuck yourself behind a lead rider and let him or her take the wind and pull you along. This is what one gets to do in reading Hibbard's The Art of Cycling - draft off a strong writer and thinker through a meditation on a very basic, but incredibly beautiful, method of going from here to there at high speed. Drafting can be dangerous if the lead rider is unsteady, but Hibbard proves a reliable guide. The Art of Cycling is worth the ride."--John Kaag, author of Hiking with Nietzsche
"An exceptional read."--Paul Kimmage, author of Rough Ride
"Cycling is an extended form of thinking and The Art of Cycling is a dazzling trip on both counts. Taking a racing line between Descartes and Nietzsche, Moser and Merckx, James Hibbard dismantles what it means to be a cyclist and puts it together again in thought-provoking ways - and, like a Zen master or cyclist in the mountains, achieves moments of transcendence"
--Max Leonard, author of Higher Calling
"A delicate balance of storytelling and putting his life and cycling into philosophical context, Hibbard manages to produce a dynamic yet insightful read."-- "Road.cc"