Around the World on Two Wheels: Annie Londonderry's Extraordinary Ride

At first, I was very excited to hear about this true but mostly unknown story about a 19th-century woman who rode a bicycle around the world. However, about a quarter of the way through, my disappointment in the book started growing and continued, all the way to the end. These are my comments:<br /><br />1. First, I must point out that I listened to the audiobook version and personally, I thought the narrator was awful. (It was not the author.) He read the text in an odd and distracting cadence with a kind of up-talk lilt at the end of many sentences. His style didn't match the story and I found it annoying and distracting. (I can't help but wonder if I would have liked the book more if the narration had been better.)<br /><br />2. Second, the author's substantial use of direct quotes from the newspapers of the time was tedious. There were so many of them, I was reminded of a grade-school report in which a student cobbles together paragraphs from an encyclopedia instead of writing the report in his/her own words. Furthermore, many of these articles were redundant, and only continued to relate the fabricated details of Annie's bike ride, speaking of which...<br /><br />3. I felt somewhat misled by the title and description of the story, which I thought would be one of adventure and history-making, when in fact it was a story of hood-winking the public. Why not be up-front with this from the beginning?<br /><br />4. I really didn't feel like I got to "know" Annie in this book. I understand the author's handicap in not being able to uncover many direct sources from Annie herself, but I think it would have been better if the author had a point of view about who and what Annie was, rather than leaving her as a bit of a mystery and a curiosity. In fact, to me, the most interesting part of the book was in the two sections at the very end that came after the epilogue (can't remember what he called them). In these sections, the author relates his own story of discovering a personal connection to Annie and his experience of researching her tale. I really enjoyed this part of the book. Further, when he relates the story of what happened to Annie's daughter, Molly, and her other children after their mother's bike ride, the book became very dramatic and riveting -- THAT is the story I wish he had told, rather than simply stringing together endless newspaper articles about Annie's bike ride. (I think it would have been better if he used the approach that Rebecca Skloot used in "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.")<br /><br />5. Actually, what I would like to see is a fictional account of Annie's story. There are enough facts about this fascinating story that a good fiction writer could paint a captivating tale of this unusual woman and her adventure, by using a bit of imagination and envisioning certain aspects of the story. <br /><br />6. One final comment: I really enjoyed learning about the significance of the bicycle to the lives of women and the growing women's movement, and also the phenomenon of competitive round-the-world travels that were so popular in the late 19th century. I'm glad I read the book and learned about this little-known chapter in American history and women's history, but can't highly recommend the book itself.

This story was incredible!!! I had never heard of "Annie Londonderry" until my husband bought this book for me to read. As I have cycled across southern and western France he was sure Annie would pique my interest. He was right. I'm glad to have read the story told through the eyes of one of her relations. I'm not sure anyone else could have done so unbiased a job as Peter Zheutlin has done. I must say, as much as I admire her prowess, I would so love to know what was going on in her mind to have lived the life she did. Bicycling around the world isn't easy to do even now, so I can't even imagine what Annie really felt about what she did while she was doing it. If you like an underdog taking on the world and "winning" kind of story then read this book.<a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/2113943.Around_the_World_on_Two_Wheels_Annie_Londonderry_s_Extraordinary_Ride" title="Around the World on Two Wheels Annie Londonderry's Extraordinary Ride by Peter Zheutlin" rel="noopener">Around the World on Two Wheels: Annie Londonderry's Extraordinary Ride</a>

I found this to be a very terrible book about a very interesting event. The author didn't have sufficient information to really tell the story, so he speculated endlessly. "What Annie must have been thinking at this time?" "Whether she actually did this or that is not known, but..." He fills in the rest of the pages by quoting endless newspaper stories that say exactly the same thing, over and over again. It seems quite clear to me that this gentleman sold the book on proposal and then could not dredge up sufficient verifiable AND interesting information to provide an entire book on the subject. And so he went with 25% verifiable, 25% interesting, 25% completely speculative and 25% totally irrelevant. Of course, that only covered about 20,000 words, so he just repeated them over and over again. This could read as a textbook on how NOT to write a popular history. I found this book truly awful.<br /><br />For Victorian history obsessives, or complete early-bicycling-history wonks, it should get two stars out of five, instead of the one star (or no stars if that was allowed) I gave it, because it has a few brief passages of interesting information about the development of women's riding clothes. However, even there, the author implies that the protagonist's adoption of certain clothes existed completely in a vacuum -- as if she invented this stuff. He offers NO documentation for this, and in fact appears unclear on the details of bicycling history. He seems to be operating with an extremely narrow focus that does an utter disservice to the topic. The author's knowledge of bicycling technology seems fantastically absent; he doesn't cover much of the interesting aspects of the way bicycles were invented, and that seems far more relevant than other things discussed repetitively (and largely without insight). It is actually bizarre to read a book so unbelievably un-insightful, pretentious and self-important all at the same time. There is a dearth of information on some of these topics, but on other areas it would have taken relatively little research to provide important details about other aspects of the bicycling world at the time, and placing this in larger context.<br /><br />Instead, the author wrote a book that reads like a term paper written by a lazy student, who's incapable of thinking big. A trivial and unimportant book about an invigorating time and an inspiring string of bicycling developments, viewed with myopia by peering at the fragmentary string of events that are not isolated, but seem so because of the author's unbelievable flatness of affect. A REALLY disappointing book.

To me, this is an example of when a historical non-fiction, with a fascinating and little-known subject matter, goes very, very wrong.<br /><br />The story focuses on a woman named Annie Kochovsky who, near the turn of the century, abandoned her husband and three children, along with her Jewish last name, and set out to be the first woman to travel around the world on bicycle. Interesting idea, especially when you consider the role of women at the time and how Annie may have contributed to the idea of the "New Woman." And, even more interesting, the entire venture was really nothing more than a promotional ploy as she even changed her last name to Londonderry for a sponsorship agreement, and the entire idea behind the challenge to race around the world was based on false pretenses of a bet between wealthy businessmen. There are so many false pretenses that flow from Londonderry's mouth during the book that it becomes decidedly difficult to determine fact from fiction. Fascinating, right?<br /><br />Well, unfortunately, in the hands of the author, the story is so muddled in copious yet insignificant detail that the true story, adventure, and intrigue get left way behind. Nobody can cite Zheutlin for a lack of research. But the book reads like a high school history report with chopped together newspaper quotations and first-hand letters without much exposition or actual story-telling in-between. And in the portions of the tale that seem like they should be the most interesting, there is little said while several pages are dedicated to quotations that are pointless and add little if nothing to he progression of the account. It may very well be that there is just not enough actual information to fill in the gaps, such as any information about why Annie might have embarked on the journey. And that might be why the book felt rather incomplete. The Wikipedia page on Annie, by the way, is comprised of eight very slender paragraphs.<br /><br />Despite the fascinating subject matter, the book feels a lot like Londonderry's around the world adventure: long, clunky, tiring, and full of suspicious factual accounting holes.

Fascinating, Inspiring, &amp; Complete Woman Badassery!!

Annie Londonderry was nothing if not a storyteller - literal truth be damned. She also had bravery, daring, and no small amount of gumption. This book is her tale, as told by her great nephew.<br /><br />Annie Kopchovsky, for that was her real name, took off from Boston on a 47 pound bicycle on a bet that she could cycle around the world and make $5,000 while doing so. The prize was $10,000, quite a large sum in 1894. <br /><br />Long story short, she did it, though her accounts of her trip were often more embroidered than a medieval tapestry. The parts of her story that can be verified are still pretty amazing. Not many women of that era would even come up with the idea of leaving her husband and 3 small children behind while she took off for a year on a bicycle trip around the world. It just wasn't (isn't) done. And yet, she did.<br /><br />Reading this, I was often struck with how little things have changed. Newspapers first reported on her looks and clothing and then, almost incidentally, who she was and what she was doing. She was often asked if she would find a good man to marry on her trip. She got the most push back from women, but there were always good and helpful people along the way who made her journey possible.<br /><br />All in all, a fun read.

There are several historical characters who deserve movies of their own - or at least screenplays - but most of these individuals I keep to myself (if a story is too good to be true, then I naturally want to write it).<br /><br />But I'm happy to remind anyone and everyone about one of the great feminist figures of the 19th Century: the amazing Annie Londonderry - the first woman to more or less "ride a bicycle around the world" - and whose adventures are detailed in "Around the World on Two Wheels: Annie Londonderry's Extraordinary Ride" [Peter Zheutin].<br /><br />At the time of her adventure, in 1894, Annie Kopchovsky was a mother of three, wife of an immigrant, and had never ridden a bicycle in her life. This is a story of gold-plated audacity and startling re-invention: a young woman riding alone out of Boston with one change of clothes, no money, and just the ambition to be famous. She appears to have been a born storyteller, and extremely glib: consistently using the main channel of media at the time (newspapers) to publicize her tour and raise money. <br /><br />It was probably inevitable that she be something of a huckster. You could say that she made lying into something of an art form. On the other hand, since the cultural deck was firmly stacked against her, she needed a little deception to even the odds. <br /><br />She was 15 months on the road, making a memorable impression wherever she went, and then - once back home - she went back to being a wife and mother for the most part. She promised a book, but never wrote it - and now is thoroughly forgotten. <br /><br />She's a character made for a brash, and funny, and (what the hell) mildly erotic movie.

<strong>Lots of headlines </strong><br /><br />An interesting read about an interesting (?) individual. She clearly was a scammer. Self promotion is not becoming in the modern world so just think about how she was perceived in 1894-5! The author tries to make the story more than it is (truly a Annie quality-a bit ironic) but the reader suffers through one newspaper account after another. Had the author created a fictional character (based on a true story) there may have been a better platform to tell the story in a more interesting way.

There's a part of me that really enjoyed this book and learning about the almost faddish history of races and rides around the world. I was fascinated by Annie's boldness in going on the trip, and her clever brashness in seeking sponsors and fast talking people into supporting her ride. Considering that it sounds like the author did not have much to work on--mostly a lot of newspaper articles--he did a pretty decent job of piecing her trip together and parsing out reality from Annie's many stories.<br /><br />That being said, I feel as though the book had an overall unfinished feel to it. From the epilogue, I got the sense that the author really developed a sense of hero worship for Annie and perhaps was more eager to share her story *now* than to polish it up. Or perhaps the publisher decided there wasn't likely to be a huge clamor of people wanting to read the book, so when it looked pretty good they went ahead and published it quickly.<br /><br />The title of the book is misleading--Annie didn't ride her bike around the world--and there was a lot of that sort of misleading information in the book. Don't get me wrong. The author very definitely would clarify what was fact and what was fiction, but he would often do so after presenting Annie's tale as fact. If he had maybe capitalized on the discrepancies as almost a plot device, I think he could have gotten more out of the book. Also, I think the book would have been stronger if the negatives had been more upfront, along with the positives.<br /><br />There was also a lot of information in the Epilogue that I think would have added to the story, like what had happened to the family. The author almost mentions them as an aside, not worth developing, but Annie's story was not just her daring at traveling the world. It also included the impact it had on her loved ones. I think the book would have been stronger if there had been a bit more focus on that.<br /><br />All that being said, it was a fascinating story and offered an interesting glimpse into the past.

Amelia Earhardt? Cheryl Strayed? The Amazing Race? All and none of the aforementioned. Amelia Earhardt had a desire from the youngest age to fly and then to fly around the world, her dream, her aspiration, with the help of a great public relations man. All we know about Annie Londonderry, not her real name, is that she landed on an opportunity to bicycle the world, more likely than not an opportunistic adventure. Cheryl Strayed hiked the Pacific Western mountain ridge, an impulsive decision she embraced wholly untrained and unprepared. Annie Londonderry approached her world adventure in much the same manner: she had never ridden a bike before, her garments were ill suited (much like Strayed's boots), she had no "plan," and more or less winged it day by day. Like contestants in The Amazing Race meet the host at the end of each leg of the journey, Annie Londonderry was required to check-in with consulates along the journey where they would verify she successfully made her port call. The question is how did she get to each of those points? As a one woman show, very intelligent and personable, there is no question she traveled the globe at a time when women were restricted by Victorian standards, did and saw things most men and women only have dreamed. She won the $10,000 prize and earned $5000 along the way. And then? After making front page news for most of 15 months she faded into history. It is thanks to the author, who is a long lost relative, that the myth and mystery of Annie Londonderry is put to print. Kudos to the author for the four years he spent researching his long lost great Aunt and for putting together the puzzle as best he could.