I am cleaning out the Bicycle Quarterly Press library. I am keeping all the great books or those that we may need for reference later. This even includes two editions of Eugene Sloane’s Complete Book of Bicycling, which I bought mostly because they had some grainy images of René Herse and Alex Singer bikes – the only information I could find in those pre-Internet days.

But there are a lot of books that simply aren’t good enough to keep.

It’s amazing how much has being printed on bicycles in recent years that has not stood the test of time. Hastily produced efforts on “custom bicycles” with fuzzy photos pulled off the Internet. A history of Campagnolo that appears to have been written in two weeks by somebody only marginally familiar with the company.  I’ll give these books to a local charity. Despite their obvious flaws, somebody will enjoy them…

One…