The World's Fastest Man: The Extraordinary Life of Cyclist

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The World's Fastest Man: The Extraordinary Life of Cyclist Major Taylor, America's First Black Sports Hero

In the tradition of The Boys in the Boat and Seabiscuit, a fascinating portrait of a groundbreaking but forgotten figureâ€”the remarkable Major Taylor, the black man who broke racial barriers by becoming the worldâ€™s fastest and most famous bicyclist at the height of the Jim Crow era.

In the 1890s, the nationâ€™s promise of equality had failed spectacularly. While slavery had ended with the Civil War, the Jim Crow laws still separated blacks from whites, and the excesses of the Gilded Age created an elite upper class. Amidst this world arrived Major Taylor, a young black man who wanted to compete in the nationâ€™s most popular and mostly white manâ€™s sport, cycling. Birdie Munger, a white cyclist who once was the worldâ€™s fastest man, declared that he could help turn the young black athlete into a champion.

Twelve years before boxer Jack Johnson and fifty years before baseball player Jackie Robinson, Taylor faced racism at nearly every turnâ€”especially by whites who feared he would disprove their stereotypes of blacks. In The Worldâ€™s Fastest Man, years in the writing, investigative journalist Michael Kranish reveals new information about Major Taylor based on a rare interview with his daughter and other never-before-uncovered details from Taylorâ€™s life. Kranish shows how Taylor indeed became a world champion, traveled the world, was the toast of Paris, and was one of the most chronicled black men of his day.

From a moment in time just before the arrival of the automobile when bicycles were king, the populace was booming with immigrants, and enormous societal changes were about to take place, The Worldâ€™s Fastest Man shines a light on a dramatic moment in American historyâ€”the gateway to the twentieth century.

Country	USA
Author	Michael Kranish
Binding	Kindle Edition
EISBN	9781501192616
Format	Kindle eBook
Label	Scribner
Manufacturer	Scribner
NumberOfPages	385
PublicationDate	2019-05-07
Publisher	Scribner
ReleaseDate	2019-05-07
Studio	Scribner

The World's Fastest Man: The Extraordinary Life of Cyclist Major Taylor, America's First Black Sports Hero

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