Product Description

This fully updated edition is an inspiring and comprehensive look into the ever-growing world of off-road cycling. It explains with rare insight why mountain bikes have re-invented the popular image of the bicycle, making riding a bike fashionable, comfortable, pleasant and ultimately extremely rewarding. It covers the history, the excitement, the diverse styling and the remarkable technology that surrounds the mountain bike. It offers readers an educational look at the mountain bike's roots, its heroes, and the often baffling design diversification of its many disciplines. There are also sections on the practical aspects of riding technique, fitness, specialist kit, bike anatomy and bike care.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19507 in Books
• Published on: 2009-03-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 168 pages

About the Author
Steve Worland has been riding off-road for about 35 years. He's been a specialist mountain bike journalist for nearly two decades and he's tested about 2,000 bikes for leading MTB monthly publications. He's currently Technical Director of the UK's best-selling bike magazine, Mountain Biking UK.

Customer Reviews

Excellent as an introduction to people like me!
Having just bought my first bike in years, I was looking for a book to give me a summary of mountain biking in one simple package. I bought this book, though nearly didn't as the other review here was quite negative and I was worried it would mainly be a handful of photos and very little information.

Fortunatley, it turned out to be a cracker and gave all I needed to learn the lingo, be familiar with different type of bikes, competitions, gears, brakes, etc. It goes into more detail you would think, discussing even the newer composite frames and magic alloys dismissing some of them as marketing bull! It's wrote in the style of a magazine, so will also tell you what products to avoid if the author thinks they're not worth it.

I bought several other bike books at the time, but this seems to cover all of the topics in a simple package. The great photos and simple explanations mean it actually was more informative than some of the heavier material. The maintenance section is a bit brief, but perfect if you're a fairly casual rider or take your bike to the shop for big stuff - it's not meant to be a maintenance book (Haynes do another much more detailed bike book for this, called "The Bike Book" no less!).

It's a perfect summary of the entire spectrum of mountain biking and will make a lot of sense of all the stuff you see in the shops, the banter you see on forums and even make sure you ride it properly.

Not what you might expect
Over the years Haynes have built up a reputation for producing exceptional technical manuals that enable people to repair their cars etc with relative ease. So comprehensive were these books that whenever I bought a new car, I bought the Haynes manual to go with it. Unsurprisingly then, when I bought a mountain bike and saw that Haynes did a "Mountain Bike" manual, I bought one. I know it's "only a bike" and that it's significantly less mechanically complicated than a car but I thought that with all the various items of suspension, brakes, gears and wheels I'd appreciate something to help me through the less frequently performed operations. Unfortunately, this book isn't it. Rather than being a comprehensive maintenance manual for mountain bikes, it's a mish-mash of nif-naf and trivia that spans the history of mountain biking (complete with pictures of people on single-speed, no-suspension racers form the 1960s and 70s) through to modern full-suspension down-hill racing. There is a vaguely interesting section on fitness and training and a remarkably slim (for a Haynes manual) section on maintenance but by-and-large, it's not at all what I was hoping for.

In summary, if you are after a book on fitness training for mountain biking, there are better offerings. If you are after a book that will assist you in the maintenance of your maountain bike, there are also better offerings. If you are looking for a coffee table book on the general topic of mountain biking that you won't give more than a cursory flick through before consigning it to the bookshelf, this is probably close to ideal.

Haynes - You can do better. I am disappointed.

Nice Buy!!
Nice informative book, give's helpful tip's on what bike to get, what kind of food is going to help you when you need a boost up a hard trail and also looks at the history of mountain biking. Lots more info included although dont buy this if you are looking for a maintainance guide as it isn't what you will be after!

All in all very happy with this book