Front Matter -- Copyright page -- Preface / Timo Myllyntaus -- Illustrations, Graphs and Tables -- Note on Contributors -- Introduction: The Historical Production of the Invisible and Visible Bicycles / Tiina Männistö-Funk -- Discourses and Materialities of the Bicycle -- Rethinking Bicycle Histories / Peter Cox -- Entrenched Habit or Fringe Mode: Comparing National Bicycle Policies, Cultures and Histories / Harry Oosterhuis -- Political and Economic Shaping of the Bicycle -- Waves of Cycling: Policies of Cycling, Mobility, and Urban Planning in Stockholm since 1970 / Martin Emanuel -- Making the Bicycle Dutch: The Development of the Bicycle Industry in the Netherlands, 1860–1940 / Sue-Yen Tjong Tjin Tai and Frank Veraart -- Bicycle in the Practices -- Betting on the Wheel: The Bicycle and Japan’s Post-War Recovery / M. William Steele -- Modernizing the Bicycle: The International Human-Powered Vehicle Movement and the “Bicycle Renaissance” since the 1970s / Manuel Stoffers -- History, Tweed and the Invisible Bicycle / Nicholas Oddy -- Back Matter -- Bibliography -- Index.

The Invisible Bicycle brings together different insights into the social, cultural and economic history of the bicycle and cycling in historical eras of ubiquitous bicycle use that have remained relatively invisible in bicycle history. It revisits the typical timeline of cycling’s decline in the 1950s and 1960s and the renaissance beginning in the 1970s by bringing forth the large national and local variations, varying uses and images of the bicycle, and different bicycle cultures as well as their historical background and motivations. To understand the role, possibilities and challenges of the bicycle today, it is necessary to know the history that has formed them. Therefore The Invisible Bicycle is recommended also to present-day practitioners and planners of bicycle mobility. Contributors are: Peter Cox, Martin Emanuel, Tiina Männistö-Funk, Timo Myllyntaus, Nicholas Oddy, Harry Oosterhuis, William Steele, Manuel Stoffers, Sue-Yen Tjong Tjin Tai, Frank Veraart.