David V. Herlihy is the author of The Lost Cyclist and Bicycle: The History, winner of the 2004 Award for Excellence in the History of Science. A leading authority in his field, he has been interviewed by numerous television, radio, and newspaper personalities in the U.S. and abroad, and his work has appeared in a wide variety of general interest and specialty magazines. He is responsible for the naming of a bicycle path in Boston after Pierre Lallement, the original bicycle patentee, and for the installation of a plaque by the New Haven green where the Frenchman introduced Americans to the art of cycling in 1866. He writes:

I have been deeply immersed in bicycle history for about twenty years now. I started by writing a few retrospective articles for Bicycle Guide, a defunct magazine for cycling enthusiasts. Then I learned that the Frenchman who first patented the basic bicycle, in 1866, is buried in my hometown, Boston—and no one knew anything about it! I began to research the life of this forgotten mechanic, Pierre Lallement, originally from Pont-à-Mousson.

I gradually expanded my research to include the early development of the bicycle, the high-wheel era of the 1880s, and the boom years of the 1890s, when the “safety” bicycle was introduced (the modern prototype). Then I turned my attention to the bicycle in the automotive age. This extensive work provided the foundation for my first book, Bicycle: the History, with Yale University Press, in 2004.

Two years ago, I published my second book, The Lost Cyclist, with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. It’s about Frank Lenz, a German-American who, growing up in Pittsburgh in the 1880s, discovers a love for the high bicycle. It was a fleet and precarious machine, which suited the dashing Lenz just fine. He rode many hundreds of miles into the countryside, to escape the gritty, industrial city, his boring accounting job, and his unhappy home consisting of a doting mother and an alcoholic stepfather.

Lenz adored Thomas Stevens, an Anglo-American who had just completed a global circuit on his bicycle, as a correspondent with Outing magazine. Chancing upon Stevens’ bicycle on display in Buffalo, following a disappointing finish in a 100-mile bicycle race, Lenz vowed that we would one day make an even grander world tour.

Lenz quickly realized that his best chance to attract a sponsor was to hone his skills as photographer, so that he could record his adventure en route. During his summer vacations in 1890 and 1891, he took several long distance tours with his pal Charles Petticord, lugging along his wooden box camera and glass plates to build his portfolio.

Finally, in early 1892, Outing magazine, the same review that had sponsored Stevens on his world tour, agreed to Lenz’s proposition to tour the world “with wheel and camera.” However, the editor made it very clear to Lenz that he would have to ride a new-fangled “safety” bicycle, with chain and sprocket. Lenz had long resisted this diminutive mount, developed in Great Britain in the late 1880s, but he realized that was that this would be his only opportunity to achieve his dream. So he agreed to the terms.

On May 15, 1892, Lenz set off from Pittsburgh with his 57-pound (25 kilo) Victor pneumatic, laden with some 40 pounds of gear. Somewhat ironically, given his stubborn devotion to the high-wheeler, he became the most prominent proponent of the new style bicycle, which was even beginning to attract female riders. It is not exaggeration to say that his advocacy would help to spark the great bicycle boom.

Two years later, as he neared Europe for the final leg, Lenz vanished myseriously. As pressure mounted on Outing to find their lost correspondent, the editor decided to send William Sachtleben to Lenz’s last known location, in Eastern Turkey. Sachtleben had only recently completed his own, self-funded, “round the world” bicycle journey, along with a college chum named Thomas G. Allen, Jr. The pair had covered the same caravan road that Lenz was following.

Sachtleben’s mission was delayed, however, as Turkey slipped ever deeper into a violent chaos, including a wave of Armenian massacres. The ancient Ottoman Empire itself was on the verge of collapse. Sachtleben reached Turkey in the spring of 1895, a year after Lenz’s disappearance. Under the most difficult circumstances imaginable, Sachtleben began his search. His quest for justice would attract worldwide attention, drawing the direct involvement of the State Department and the Sultan himself.

I very much look forward to lively evening of bicycle history at the American Library!

In The Rhetoric of Death and The Eloquence of Blood (Berkley/Penguin 2010 and 2011), American writer Judith Rock brought 17th century Paris, ballet producing Jesuits, the college of Louis le Grand, Paris’s first police chief, outlaw Huguenots, seditious beggars, and fire-fighting Franciscans to historical mystery lovers.  Based on her doctoral research (done in Paris), the novels garnered starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Library Journal, and an Editors’ Choice review from the Historical Novel Society.  In May, Judith returns to Paris at the invitation of the American Library to speak about the books–including the third, A Plague of Lies, which will be released in October, 2012.  One reason she loves writing the series is that it lets her use all of her varied past:  as professional dancer and choreographer, police officer, professor, playwright and actress. Judith will speak about The Eloquence of Blood on Wednesday, May 9 as a part of the Evenings with an Author series. She writes:

“Paris has long been famous as the home of expatriots.  Sometimes, as I write my Charles du Luc historical mystery series, I think of myself as an expatriot in time.  So much so, that when the wonderful invitation to speak at the American Library arrived, my first thought was, “The library is a long way outside the city wall. I wonder how long it takes to get there…”

My Jesuit sleuth and historical mystery series grew out of my doctoral research, done in Paris in the 1980’s.  I researched the 17^th and 18^th century ballets produced by rhetoric teachers at the Jesuit school of Louis le Grand on the rue St. Jacques.  My sleuth, Maître Charles du Luc, is a young ex-soldier turned Jesuit, who teaches rhetoric at Louis le Grand in the 1680’s.

In order for Charles to unravel mysteries, I have to unravel the mysteries of what Paris was like in his time. What did his Paris look like? How did people live? How did they think? Were they really different from us?  Or were they just us in costumes–bravely making do without cell phones and Facebook and sidewalk cafés?

There were cafés, but the only sidewalks were on the Pont Neuf. And those were crowded with vendors’ stalls, and with pedestrians avoiding hurtling carriages and the occasional pair of duelists in the roadway. There was, of course, no Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe,  Champs Élysées, Louvre Museum. No Luxembourg Gardens, no grand Paris Opera building, no Haussman avenues and architecture.  Medieval Paris was receding as modern Paris slowly took shape. The walls were coming down–faster on the Right Bank than on the Left. On my early 18^th century map, Paris stretches only a dozen or so of our city blocks from its north wall to the river, and less than that from the river to the south wall. Its four or five hundred thousand people had long been spilling into the suburbs.  Above all the crowding, Paris bristled with wooden cranes as new, classically designed brick and stone buildings went up–some people called Charles’s Paris “the new Rome.”

Charles solves mysteries that grow out of the real world he lives in. In The Rhetoric of Death, he’s caught in the Catholic-Protestant conflict that erupted after Louis XIV outlawed Protestantism in 1685. The Eloquence of Blood’s mystery is spun from from the legal tangle of adoption in his time: illegal under formal law, legal according to customary law.  In A Plague of Lies (out in October) Charles learns that Louis, “the Most Christian king,” is covertly supporting the Moslem Turks as they attack Eastern Europe.  The books’ characters include real people from 1680’s Paris, like Nicolas de la Reynie, first head of its police, and Pierre Beauchamps, the great ballet master and dance director of the Paris Opera.

Charles’s fellow Parisians kept up with scientific discoveries: the first germs had been seen through microscopes, blood was known to circulate. People were globally connected:  Siamese ambassadors came to the Louis le Grand ballet performance in 1686. And these same people believed that demons of the air caused thunderstorms and that the ringing of baptized church bells made the storms stop.

They weren’t just us in costumes.  But when we “expatriate” in time and visit their world, we may find surprising perspective on our own–and on ourselves.”

Born in Paris, Lily Tuck is the author of four previous novels: Interviewing Matisse, or the Woman Who Died Standing Up; The Woman Who Walked on Water; Siam, or the Woman Who Shot a Man, which was nominated for the 2000 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction; and The News from Paraguay, winner of the National Book Award. She is also the author of the biography Woman of Rome: A Life of Elsa Morante. Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker and are collected in Limbo and Other Places I Have Lived. Lily Tuck now divides her time between Maine and New York City.

At the risk of falling into the trap of Qui s’excuse, s’accuse, I very much wanted, when I began this novel about a widow’s all-night vigil beside her husband who has died suddenly, that it not be construed as being autobiographical.  In fact, I fell over myself backward, to have everything in the novel – the characters, the setting, the events – be completely different – despite the fact that I am a widow — from me or my life.  For instance, Philip, the husband in the novel, is tall, dark, thin while my own husband was stocky and blond, Philip is a mathematician, my husband was a lawyer, Philip was born in Wisconsin, my husband was born in Belgium….  I could go on and on pointing out differences.  Not long ago, I read an article in The Atlantic Monthly by Bret Anthony Johnston who is the director of the creative writing program at Harvard and, in it, he writes how he always advises his students to write about what they don’t know.  I agree with him.  If one writes about what one does not know, chances are one will surprise oneself as well learn something new (as opposed to writing what one already knows which offers no surprises and, as a result, may become boring or a cliché).   Both surprising oneself and learning something new keeps the writing of fiction fresh on the page.  In my case, in this novel, I learned a lot about math – physics and quantum mechanics – and although, as a student in high school I had been good at math – in fact, better at math than in English and, had times been different, who knows, I might have become a mathematician – in any case, I had no idea how much I would enjoy and how much I would learn researching this novel.  Also, and this is my point, the real payoff, so-to-speak, as it turned out, was probability.  Probability theory which I write about – since, in the novel, that is Philip’s mathematical field – and which, at the outset, I knew nothing about, became the metaphor for the novel.  More than that, it was a unexpected gift.

Marilyn Waite has worked, studied and researched in over eight countries across four continents. She has implemented water and sanitation projects in rural Madagascar, led task forces to decrease reagent use in the spent fuel recycling process, as well as authored numerous publications in sustainable engineering topics (textile engineering, energy, and water). Marilyn currently resides in Europe, where she is focusing on low carbon energy as a source for climate change mitigation.

In her book, Sustainable Water Resources in the Built Environment, Marilyn Waite discusses the importance of decentralized water collection and savings mechanisms in sustainable construction. She explores these issues with a particular focus on developing countries and how they can benefit from sustainable water practices. Marilyn will present her book as a part of the Library’s Evenings With an Author series on Wednesday, April 11 at 19h30.

As we approach Earth Day on April 22, 2012, many individuals and organizations will partake in hands-on activities to raise environmental awareness. Planting trees, cleaning up rivers, and participating in walks for the environment are all traditionally active ways that can make a difference in communities. But in the information technology age, there are a plethora of tools that help us do even more. We use social and professional online media to pledge “green” acts of kindness, to microfinance sustainable start-ups in local and far-away places, to analyze our water, carbon and ecological footprints, to make eco-friendly consumption decisions, and to nurture new ideas for the planet using virtual communities. The advent of online networks has enabled people to rally around noteworthy issues, share information in order to have a complete picture of a problem, and feel connected despite location differences.

There are many environmental causes that one can “follow,” “friend,” “tweet” or “like” on virtual platforms. Some are open to the general public while others may be associated with alumni groups or institutional affiliations. I recently became a member of a newly-implemented network called ELEEP (Emerging Leaders in Environmental and Energy Policy Network). ELEEP is a transatlantic best practices network that brings together people from a wide range of professional backgrounds to exchange ideas on energy and the environment. The network takes place in a private and customized online forum where one can engage in discussions and share information with pre-vetted peers. What is unique about this network is its ability to tie together virtual and in-person activities. Based on a merit-based system of active participation in the network, members are able to participate in study tours. These tours have included analyzing the transformation of the post-industrial cities of Pittsburgh and Detroit, to transforming the energy economy in Denmark and Northern Germany.

For Earth Day 2012, in addition to our normal eco-activities, let us scan our use of information technology to see how we can benefit the planet through its use. Some may send out e-mails for energy and water saving pledges. Some may shop for eco-friendly products. Some may offset the carbon emissions of their next flight. Some may share an innovative idea for sustainability with their networks. Some may step out of the virtual world to put into practice an eco-idea (like capturing heat produced from computers for heating and cooling).

Happy Earth Day.