Black American cyclist, Major Taylor, winner of the 1899 World Sprint Championship, was the highest paid and most famous athlete in what was then the world's most popular and lucrative sport. Spectators packed stadiums in North America, Europe and Australasia to watch him race. In the United States, however, his white rivals' racial bigotry, hatred, threats, and dangerous and dirty riding tactics became intolerable. In Australia for the 1904 summer racing series, Taylor faced his American arch enemy, and hostilities came to a head.

The landmark work in its field, this book chronicles the use of bicycles in warfare from the Boer War to Afganistan today. Heavily illustrated, it looks at the machine's adaptation and use by the Vietnamese, the Japanese, in the invasion of Malaya and Singapore, and by both the Allied and German forces in World Wars I and II.