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Motorcycle Book Store > Motorcycle books beginning with B
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Bike Lust: Harleys, Women, and American Society |
Author: Barbara Joans
Published: 2001-09-17 |
List price: $21.95
Our price: $21.95
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As of: January 06th, 2009 09:50:27 PM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 Finding your place in the world
This book is about identity and the various Harley sub-cultures. It has little to say about metric cruisers, sport-tourers, or any other type of motorcycling.
It is not a textbook. It is for riders or wanna-be riders. It is for fun, for personal enjoyment.
And I did enjoy the book. It helped me learn that I should not waste money on a Harley when I replace my metric cruiser. Apparently I belong with the sport touring folks who wear high-visibility protective gear and top-of-the-line full face helmets by choice, not law.
I enjoyed the book, although the author's opinion of helmet comfort is misinformed and probably based on ill-fitting headgear.
I know I don't want to be part of the culture she describes, but I recommend the book. I disagree with her on many points, but I recommend this book. It's really a treat to read.
 Participant-observation as Being There
BIKE LUST is a unique, forceful and informative ethnography in which Barbara Joans takes the reader inside the minds and hearts of an emergent, important and incompletely understood American subculture. She tells much of this story in the language and with the forcefulness of a cultural insider.
I know of no account of Harley culture like it. The examples are clear and cleanly and drawn, not only in the manner of a professional anthropologist but also as a storyteller with a sharp ear for language.
Joans comes to the task with particularly apt credentials, and the originality of her technique illuminates the character of the group she represents. An accomplished anthropologist with an established reputation in the field, Joans
has not written simply an anthropologist's monograph, but by adopting the voice of her study population, she brings the reader inside the community; she makes the events and the people come alive. This combining professional precision with subcultural patoise, enhances the portrayal. You find yourself seeing through biker's eyes, hearing and absorbing biker terminology and world view, and feeling the clamminess of water-soaked clothing after a stormy night's ride.
Because of Joans' highly accessible style, often invisible prose, and the intrinsic interest of the material, the work will have broad appeal. "Bike Lust" should find extensive readership among the general public because of its readability,
and because of the adventures it recounts. A significant part of Joans' contribution to this literature is her use of both masculine and feminine perspectives in equally engaging ways. For this reason it might be argued that Joans' work is the first effectively ethnographic study of this subculture.
 If you read only one book on motorcycling . . .
...this shouldn't be it. As a woman, I agree that someone ought to write a book about this subject, but Joans hasn't done it justice. She admits speaking with only one "Biker Chick" (author's caps) and nevertheless produces a whole slew of generalizations--based on what? Observation without interview doesn't make anthropology. Many premises are established (shakily) and then contradicted only pages later. Apparently she "interviewed" a bunch of her friends, threw together some poorly supported conclusions and wound up with this book. The scholarship is too poor to make it an academic work, and there aren't enough good stories to make it a general interest work. Save your money, or read The Perfect Vehicle instead.
Informative and enjoyable read
This was an informative and enjoyable book, especially for the targeted audience. As an earlier reviewer wrote, it is not a scholarly treatise with data, so if you're an academic looking for such, you'll be disappointed. But for the motorcyclist and passenger, especially the Harley owner, it's a good read. Basically, the female author offers her opinions on Harley owners and passengers, based on her fairly recent involvement in the lifestyle. She categorizes and describes both male and female enthusiasts. Being female, and since females constitute most of the passengers and are such statistical outliers as riders, the author spends most of her time on female related issues. Her anecdotes, and those of the females she interviewed, of their riding experiences are both informative and entertaining. As a fairly recent Harley owner, I really benefitted from her insights, and I recommend the book to all my riding friends, especially the females.
A Lackluster Book
Don't be fooled by the title of this dull book. It offers neither "lust" nor insight into what is a very interesting subject---women Harley riders. We may speculate about why someone would write such a book, possibly to exercize the author's ego or to fullfill some requirment to "publish or perish". But why would anyone read this one?I bought the book with high hopes because I'm interested in the subject: women who ride big motorcycles. The book is really a cheap exploitation of people's interest in a "trendy" subject. The only real insights are those the author quotes from other books on the subject. The endless interviews with members of Harley-Davidson clubs are tedious and cover no new ground. Most strange is the author's glib treatment of the racism and antisemitism of some riders, as displayed by wearing of swastikas and making racist comments. Her analysis only goes so deep as to state that since most of "working class" white America is racist, why shouldn't Harley riders be? This is both an insult to working class Americans as well as to the reader's intelligence. I hope that this kind of crude apologism for racism is not widespread in anthropology, the discipline in which the author has her degree. Given the shallow analysis in the book, the author's gimmicky claim to be a rider herself is suspect and I wondered after reading it if she got most of her information from biker magazines.
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