Watching the Tour de France on television has been a favorite rite of early summer for my family. If you've never watched a professinal road cycling race—I don't blame you. The rules can seem arcane (sock height regulations!), etiquette transgressions can be hard to follow (don't attack during a "nature break"!) and the sport's jargon, much of it from the French, takes time to learn (domestiques, musettes, soigneurs, sticky bottles, super tucks...). The pandemic has pushed the Tour to late summer this year so there's still time to familiarize yourself with it if you've been missing sports. Below are some reading selections about the history of the Tour (the scandals!) and some of the major players, as well as some fiction reads if that's more your speed.

Nonfiction

The First Tour de France: Sixty Cyclists and Nineteen Days of Daring on the Road to Paris by Peter Cossins

The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-Ups, and Winning at All Costs by Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyle

Hamilton pulls back the curtain on the Tour de France and takes us into the secret world of professional cycling like never before: the doping, the lying, and his years as Lance Armstrong's teammate on U.S. Postal.

 

 

 

 

The Science of the Tour De France: Training Secrets of the World's Best Cyclists by James Witts

A fascinating insight into the science of the modern Tour de France peloton. A winning performance at the world's greatest bike race starts in the laboratory—and we're not talking doping. James Witts takes us into the world of marginal gains to find out how today's elite cyclists gain the advantage—physically, mentally and mechanically.

 

 

The End of the Road : The Festina Affair and the Tour That Almost Wrecked Cycling by Alasdair Fotheringham

The Tour de France is always one of the most spectacular and dramatic events in sports. But the 1998 Tour provided drama like no other. As the opening stages in Ireland unfolded, the Festina team's soigneur, Willy Voet, was arrested at the French-Belgian border with a carload of drugs. Raid upon police raid followed, with arrest after arrest hammering the Tour. In protest, there were riders' strikes and go-slows, with several squads withdrawing en masse and one expelled. By the time the Tour reached Paris, just 96 of the 189 starters remained, and of those 189 starters, more than a quarter were later reported to have doped. The 1998 ” “Tour de Farce's” status as one of the most scandal-struck sporting events in history was confirmed.

 

Lanterne Rouge: The Last Man in the Tour de France by Max Leonard

Froome, Wiggins, Mercks—we know the winners of the Tour de France, but Lanterne Rouge tells the forgotten, often inspirational and occasionally absurd stories of the last-placed rider. We learn of stage winners and former yellow jerseys who tasted life at the other end of the bunch; the breakaway leader who stopped for a bottle of wine and then took a wrong turn; the doper whose drug cocktail accidentally slowed him down and the rider who was recognized as the most combative despite finishing at the back. Max Leonard flips the Tour de France on its head and examines what these stories tell us about ourselves, the 99% who don't win the trophy, and forces us to re-examine the meaning of success, failure and the very nature of sport

Biography & Memoir

The Comeback: Greg Lemond, the True King of American Cycling, and a Legendary Tour De France by Daniel de Visé

The Comeback chronicles the life of one of America’s greatest athletes, from his roots in Nevada and California to the heights of global fame, to a falling out with his own family and a calamitous confrontation with Lance Armstrong over allegations the latter was doping—a campaign LeMond would wage on principle for more than a decade before Armstrong was finally stripped of his own Tour titles. Daniel de Visé reveals the dramatic, ultra-competitive inner world of a sport rarely glimpsed up close, and builds a compelling case for LeMond as its great American hero.

Draft Animals: Living the Pro Cycling Dream (Once in a While) by Phil Gaimon

Cycle of Lies: The Fall of Lance Armstrong by Juliet Macur

Fiction

The Black Jersey by Jorge Zepeda Patterson

When racers in training for the upcoming Tour de France begin suffering violent accidents, the best friend of a favored contender helps the French police only to discover that the killer appears to be favoring his friend's team.

The Invisible Mile by David Coventry

The 1928 Ravat-Wonder team from New Zealand and Australia were the first English-speaking team to ride the Tour de France. From June through July they faced one of the toughest in the race's history: 5,476 kilometres of unsealed roads on heavy, fixed-wheel bikes. They rode in darkness through mountains with no light and brakes like glass. They weren't expected to finish. The Invisible Mile is a powerful re-imagining of the tour from inside the peloton, where the test of endurance, for one young New Zealander, becomes a psychological journey into the chaos of the War a decade earlier. 

We Begin Our Ascent by Joe Mungo Reed

Sol and Liz are a couple on the cusp. He's a professional cyclist in the Tour de France, a workhorse but not yet a star. She's a geneticist on the brink of a major discovery, either that or a loss of funding. They've just welcomed their first child into the world, and their bright future lies just before them; if only they can reach out and grab it. But as Liz's research slows, as Sol starts doping, their dreams grow murkier and the risks graver. Over the whirlwind course of the Tour, they enter the orbit of an extraordinary cast of conmen and aspirants, who draw the young family ineluctably into the depths of an illegal drug smuggling operation. As Liz and Sol flounder to discern right from wrong, up from down, they are forced to decide: What is it we're striving for? And what is it worth?

Summaries provided via NYPL’s catalog, which draws from multiple sources. Click through to each book’s title for more.

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Staff picks are chosen by NYPL staff members and are not intended to be comprehensive lists. We'd love to hear your ideas too, so leave a comment and tell us what you’d recommend. And check out our Staff Picks browse tool for more recommendations!