Product Description

In this highly original history of the world's most famous bicycle race, Christopher S. Thompson, mining previously neglected sources and writing with infectious enthusiasm for his subject, tells the compelling story of the Tour de France from its creation in 1903 to the present. Weaving the words of racers, politicians, Tour organizers, and a host of other commentators together with a wide-ranging analysis of the culture surrounding the event - including posters, songs, novels, films, and media coverage - Thompson links the history of the Tour to key moments and themes in French history. Examining the enduring popularity of Tour racers, Thompson explores how their public images have changed over the past century. A new preface explores the long-standing problem of doping in light of recent scandals.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #272481 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 406 pages

Review
"This book is filled fascinating material... Thompson has made a great deal of sense out of this complicated story."--Podium Cafe

About the Author
Christopher S. Thompson is Associate Professor of History at Ball State University.

Customer Reviews

The Tour de France: A Cultural History
In writing The Tour de France: A Cultural History Christopher Thompson has done that very rare thing: he has increased our net knowledge of the Tour de France. This is extraordinary given that the Tour has been the subject of writers for over 100 years. Mountains of books have been written about the Tour.

This isn't a book devoted to who dropped whom on what climb. Thompson is fishing in deeper waters. Why is the Tour the way it is? How has it affected French culture and how did French culture affect the Tour? The answers to these questions are important to any cycling fan who wants to know why he has to get up early in the morning to watch a race that is taking place 9 time zones away.

Lance Armstrong voiced his anger that the Tour de France took place in France. Yet, the Tour could only have grown and matured in France. Britain, as a result of the industrial revolution, clustered its population in cities. This made it perfect for stadium sports but ill-suited for cycle road racing. France remained a rural country well into the twentieth century making it perfect for the traveling show that is the Tour. Also, the Tour encouraged and celebrated foreign winners while the Giro connived at denying foreign riders a fair shot at victory. Moreover, the Tour was founded by a strangely gifted man, Henri Desgrange, who guided the Tour from its infancy to sturdy maturity with an iron-fisted despotism. Thompson analyzes the changes to French society that made mass-spectator sport possible at the end of the nineteenth century and how Desgrange exploited them.

The Tour de France, being a cultural history, discusses at length the riders and their economic and social position in society and how it has changed over the years. There is also a very enlightening discussion of doping, a component of racing that cannot be ignored.

This is a wonderful book that will leave the reader with a deeper understanding of the Tour and France. Read this book. It is well written and exhaustively researched. Thompson's passion for bicycle racing and French history makes each page a pleasure.

There is a bonus. The cover photo of 1947 Tour winner Jean Robic being doused with water by a couple running alongside him has to be one of the greatest cycling pictures of all time. Their obvious joy juxtaposed alongside the struggling rider encapsulates the attraction of the Tour far more than any 1000 words could possibly hope to do.

-Bill McGann, Author of The Story of the Tour de France: How a Newspaper Promotion Became the Greatest Sporting Event in the World.

Fantastic insight into the Tour - and the French!
This book does exactly what it says - provides a *cultural* history of the Tour, demonstrating not only why the Tour de France is the greatest bike race in the world, but also why it could only have developed in the way it did precisely in France, and amongst the French people.
Le Tour is *the* quintessentially French event (that even the politically right-wing Tour management - the Tour was conceived by pre-WW1 Anti-Dreyfusards - refused to mount any kind of 'Tour' under German occupation says it all really) and this book demonstrates just why this is, and why consequently this race is unique and will remain so. I know of no other similar approach to the subject in the English language.
Excellent stuff; recommended not only for cycling fans, but for all Francophiles!