Bicycling attracts free spirits, and has a long history of literary fans, including Tolstoy, Hemingway, Huxley, and Saroyan. Three new or reissued volumes from Breakaway Books celebrate the freedom of cycling, including H.G. Wells's 1896 romance, 'The Wheels of Chance: A Bicycling Idyll'.

If you want to know what the wind sounds like to an eagle when it dives at thirty miles per hour, get on a bicycle at the top of a steep country road and wheel to the bottom. And if you'd like to pump your blood into capillaries long closed by supine living, pedal back up.

You can also use a bicycle as a commuter vehicle, easing through the daily crawl and stall of car-addicted and ...