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Home > The Lost Cyclist: The Epic Tale of an American Adventurer and His Mysterious Disappearance
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The Lost Cyclist: The Epic Tale of an American Adventurer and His Mysterious Disappearance
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By David Herlihy
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 (25 Reviews)
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List Price: $26.00
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Publisher:
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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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Date:
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June 18, 2010 |
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Binding:
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Hardcover
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Pages:
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336
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Amazon Best Books of the Month, June 2010: Frank Lenz was a man driven by his passions. As an accomplished "wheelman" during the late 19th century, Lenz’s dreams were dominated by the emerging sport of cycling and an intense desire to make a name for himself. In May of 1892, he attempted to fuse both by embarking on a quest to circumscribe the globe by bicycle. The journey had already been accomplished in tandem, but Lenz upped the ante--and raised eyebrows--by announcing he would ride his dangerous route alone. The Lost Cyclist is a riveting tale of tragedy, pride, and naivete that is both brilliantly told and meticulously researched. Opinions may differ as to whether Lenz was unaware or unconcerned by the inherent dangers he faced, but the story of his fateful journey belongs on the varied shelves of cycling enthusiasts, mystery fans, and nonfiction devotees alike. -- Dave Callanan Product Description**break** In the late 1880s, Frank Lenz of Pittsburgh, a renowned high-wheel racer and long-distance tourist, dreamed of cycling around the world. He finally got his chance by recasting himself as a champion of the downsized "safety-bicycle" with inflatable tires, the forerunner of the modern road bike that was about to become wildly popular. In the spring of 1892 he quit his accounting job and gamely set out west to cover twenty thousand miles over three continents as a correspondent for Outing magazine. Two years later, after having survived countless near disasters and unimaginable hardships, he approached Europe for the final leg. He never made it. His mysterious disappearance in eastern Turkey sparked an international outcry and compelled Outing to send William Sachtleben, another larger-than-life cyclist, on Lenz's trail. Bringing to light a wealth of information, Herlihy's gripping narrative captures the soaring joys and constant dangers accompanying the bicycle adventurer in the days before paved roads and automobiles. This untold story culminates with Sachtleben's heroic effort to bring Lenz's accused murderers to justice, even as troubled Turkey teetered on the edge of collapse.**break** **break**
**break** A Look Inside The Lost Cyclist
(Click on Images to Enlarge)
 |  |  |  | | Lenz (far right) in Glenshaw, with W. T. McClarren and Charles Petticord | Lenz (far left) and Petticord (center) on Smithfield bridge, leaving for New Orleans. August 1891 | From left to right: Petticord, McClarren, Lenz, and identified friend near Natrona. Note Lenz's homemade umbrella. | Lenz in Washington, PA |  |  |  |  | | Lenz and Petticord meet two "safety" riders on the National Road in Lewisville, IN, August 1890 | Lenz tips his cap in Greenfield, IN. August 1890 | Lenz and Petticord in Effingham, IL, on their way to St. Louis, August 1890 along the National Road | Petticord and Lenz in Collinsville, IL, August 1890. |
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In the late 1880s, Frank Lenz of Pittsburgh, a renowned high-wheel racer and long-distance tourist, dreamed of cycling around the world. He finally got his chance by recasting himself as a champion of the downsized “safety-bicycle” with inflatable tires, the forerunner of the modern road bike that was about to become wildly popular. In the spring of 1892 he quit his accounting job and gamely set out west to cover twenty thousand miles over three continents as a correspondent for Outing magazine. Two years later, after having survived countless near disasters and unimaginable hardships, he approached Europe for the final leg.
He never made it. His mysterious disappearance in eastern Turkey sparked an international outcry and compelled Outing to send William Sachtleben, another larger-than-life cyclist, on Lenz’s trail. Bringing to light a wealth of information, Herlihy’s gripping narrative captures the soaring joys and constant dangers accompanying the bicycle adventurer in the days before paved roads and automobiles.
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Customers' Reviews:
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Interesting saga of bicycling in the olden days, August 26, 2010
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I've tried to submit reviews twice before for this book, but forCycling's system has messed up, so this is the last time:
This is about America's greatest long distance cyclist of the 19th century. This covers the beginnings of Frank Lenz' racing career, riding "pennyfarthings" on the the unpaved roads of Ohio & Pennsylvania, to his attempt to ride solo around the world, on which ride Lenz eventually vanished. When nothing was heard from Lenz, another long distance "wheelman", who had recently nearly ridden around the world, was dispatched to try to find Lenz. The riding conditions were horrible, as horrible as some of the occupants of the lands they rode through. This was well-written, well-researched, and though I'm not the constant cyclist I once was, I found it very interesting.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful
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 Interesting story, but way too long and detailed, August 18, 2010
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I was interested of this story of a round-the-world bicycle trip from 120 years ago that ended in the disappearance of the cyclist. But I found the book way too detailed and long. I think I might have enjoyed a long magazine article more than the 300 pages of this book. I did not need to know every stop along the way of the trip. I did enjoy learning about the history of cycling, both from the equipment side and the cultural side. So if you are interested in the history of cycling this book might be worth it for you.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
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 Dying for Glory, August 2, 2010
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History is rife with fascinating but forgotten cases of lost explorers and unsolved murders. David Herlihy's 'The Lost Cyclist' includes both. It also spotlights the bicycle craze of the 1890s and the Gilded Age passion for conquering unknown territory.
In the spring of 1892 Frank Lenz, a modestly famous competitive cyclist from Pittsburgh, announced that he was undertaking a trans-continental bicycle trip that would encompass over twenty thousand miles and take him through some of the world's most dangerous, uncivilized regions. As he rode across the American heartland, through the Orient, and into the Middle Eastern desert, Lenz took scores of photos and sent regular dispatches to 'Outing' magazine, each one brimming with descriptions of exotic locales, grinding hardships, and near-death experiences.
Two years into his spectacular journey, Lenz disappeared in eastern Turkey, a country shaken by Kurd-Armenian warfare. Rumor swiftly arose that he had been murdered. While Americans demanded a resolution, 'Outing' magazine sent famous `globe girdler' William Sachtleben to the war-torn country to investigate Lenz's alleged murder and bring the perpetrators to justice.
'The Lost Cyclist' has a broader appeal than most books: mystery fans, history buffs, cycling enthusiasts, and true crime aficionados will all find something to appreciate.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful
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Such an interesting story, but..., July 31, 2010
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Brief summary, and review.
Frank Lenz was a quiet young man in his mid-twenties and working as a bookkeeper when the original high-wheel bicycle was invented. He took to it immediately and began racing during his time off. But he shortly realized that long-distance traveling with the new "safety bicycle" (the forerunner of the modern road bike) was preferable. He convinced Outing magazine to fund his dream--taking a solo journey around the world--in exchange for articles about his adventures. In the spring of 1892, he took off, pedaling more than 20,000 miles across the United States and through Hawaii to Japan, China, India, Burma, and into Persia and Turkey.
Lenz was not the first to attempt this journey on a bicycle, but he was the first to do it by himself. He suffered a number of near disasters among his memorable adventures before arriving, two years later, in Turkey as he headed into the final leg of his trip. He never came out. He had been advised to avoid it due to the political upheaval and excessive violence. He refused. And soon thereafter disappeared.
When a hue and cry was raised, Outing commissioned one of the two earlier around-the-world cyclists who were also well-known names, William Sachtleben, to undertake a search for him. But the ten-month delay from the disappearance to the beginning of the search and the fact that the country in which the search was being conducted was wild and treacherous, meant a frustrating investigation. He had no hopes of finding Lenz alive, but did he did hope to recover his body and find the murderers. Sachtleben encounters interminable impediments, international political machinations, and diplomatic obstructions as well.
No one had told this story since it had happened so here it was--the perfect adventurous tale. But I often found myself distanced from the story, and it took me a while to finish this book.
The Lost Cyclist is a good story for those readers who want to know about Mr. Lenz (who is little known these days), and read about the passion that would drive him to undertake a dangerous solo journey. It's also interesting to learn about the impact that a single man's adventure would have upon the American public and government. But overall, even though I thought the book had good parts, there were boring parts as well. When I was engrossed in the good parts it was enough to push me over the lumps and bumps into the next good one. And now that I think about it, that's probably a lot like what Frank Lenz experienced on his around-the-world bicycle journey.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful
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When Wheelmen Were Heros, July 30, 2010
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In the interval of time between when everyone used horses for transportation and when everyone used automobiles, there was a time when bicycles were the rage. The bike boom came from a number of technological innovations in design and materials, and people were fascinated by the first cyclists who rode them. David Herlihy has written a history of the bicycle, and now has written about a fascinating part of the bicycle's initial history and the popular enthusiasm for the wheelmen. _The Lost Cyclist: The Epic Tale of an American Adventurer and His Mysterious Disappearance_ (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) tells the story of Frank Lenz, who indeed became lost on a trip around the world, and though his story was a sensation at the time, he has become lost to history as well. It is also the story of another globe-girdling bicyclist, William Sachtleben, who was engaged to try to find out what had happened to Lenz. Lenz's fate was a famous mystery in its time, and it is only fair to say that neither Sachtleben nor Herlihy has solved the mystery. It is a good story, however, because of the amusing and exciting episodes in the travels of the cyclists, and because it brings back a time when a fellow on a bicycle could be a world-renowned hero just by setting out to see the globe on two wheels.
Frank Lenz was a German-American from Pittsburgh, born in 1867. In his twenties, he became a high-wheel racer, but he took up the safety bicycle for his world tour. There was danger, and Herlihy quotes from Lenz's stories sent back to _Outing_ as he bicycled (or often had to carry his 57 pound bicycle on foot) through Japan, China, Burma, India, Persia, and into Turkey. Everywhere he went, people were amazed at his two-wheeled contraption, and shahs and princes wanted him to demonstrate for them. He could do stunts on it. And then after he crossed into Turkey, two years after his tour started, his letters stopped coming. The young man had simply disappeared. All around the world people were distressed over his disappearance, and curious about what had happened; his mother was devastated, and all responded sympathetically to her loss. His editor picked William Sachtleben, another bicycle enthusiast, to do the investigation; Herlihy, in fact, tells almost as much about Sachtleben's circuit around the world as Lenz's. The courageous Sachtleben still had a sense of adventure in him after his travels, adventure that a quest for finding Lenz could have satisfied. It would have been capital, he thought, if he could have a Stanley-finds-Livingston moment, and as the possibility of that faded, he might have earned laurels if he had found Lenz's body and brought to justice any miscreants in the case.
Without giving too much away, suffice it to say that Sachtleben considered his own mission "partially successful." He was up against an inscrutable Turkish government which was troubled by tribal warfare and a general civil war, with the Kurds committing a first Armenian genocide. The US representatives in Turkey were little help, as they were trying to curry favor with Turkey and any emphasis on Lenz's fate could only make their work harder. Sachtleben's primary witnesses were Armenians who might have justly testified against Kurds or Turks, but who risked death in doing so. In all the confusion, Sachtleben stumbled across the site of a massacre of Armenians, and was able to photograph the mass burial. He took up the cause of informing his countrymen about the massacre, but the ambiguous results of his main mission colored his ability to make a go of the lecture circuit or to have a career as a journalist or adventurer. He considered at the end of his investigation, "This trip has added about ten years to my age. When I left New York I felt young. Now I feel like an old man; all my boyishness is gone." He and Lenz slipped more into obscurity as the bicycle fad faded away and people took up motoring; Herlihy even mentions the novelty of a bicycle that had a gasoline-powered engine and was called the "motor cycle." Herlihy has done a great deal of research into the rides of these two men, and into Lenz's fate as far as it could be known, and he obviously has much sympathetic affection for them, as well as for a time when bicyclists were public heroes. It was the window when bicycles were the great new transportation, and it is a shame the window didn't last longer. The first automobile transit of the US was in 1903, and automobile pioneers never had the lan that their bicycle counterparts did. _The Lost Cyclist_ documents a simpler time, but it also reminds us that the American government was trying to throw its weight around in the areas around the Middle East over a hundred years ago, and finding it a confusing and troubling task.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
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