My Christmas present this year was a copy of Jan Heine's fine volume The Golden Age of Handbuilt bicycles book. Although his follow up Competition Bicycles is more my line of interest, the bikes and photographs in this book are stunning. No critique other than I wish he had included more text and more close ups of old parts, but it's a fine effort. Anybody offer reviews or input?

I probably should sit down and look through my copy.

I've had my copy for almost a year, and still enjoy the heck out of it! I agree with your thoughts on more text and close ups of the parts.

Cheers,
Chris

I like it, in fact it's the best book about bicycles I've owned. I wish I had access to more of the pictures that they surely must have taken of those bikes. And the text is a little sketchy at times. I have to say that the title is more than a little silly, but a book entitled "The golden age of handbuilt French bikes" probably wouldn't have sold as well. The book made me appreciate fully how much of my anti-French bike bias was caused by working on so many Peugeots, Jenets, Gitanes, and Motobecanes (but mostly Peugeots) back in the day.

I concur with the above sentiments pretty much completely. I don't own a copy, but when I've had a chance to look at a copy I was bummed when I had to put it down. It's not quite the book I wish it were, but that's hardly a valid criticism. It's not like I've written a book on them myself or anything.

It'll be interesting to see what his next book is like, though for sixty clams I might til it's on netflix. Some day someone's gonna do a book on fine lugged steel bikes from the hay day 60's and 70's, with all the good stuff in it, but ...until then, this book of French unobtaniums is entertaining, and I love the cool hand made parts.

I would wish for an appendix ,
wouldn't interfere with the rest of the format
just add a couple text pages..
tooth count on the chain-rings,
to see what gear ratios they ran in those days.