By: Peter Egan
Hardcover: 320 pages
Dimensions (in inches): 6.125 x 9.25 x 1.0625
Publisher: Motorbooks, 2005
ISBN: 0760321647
I came to Peter Egan’s writings in a roundabout way.
Roundabout, that is, from a motorcyclist’s point of view.
That’s because I first became aware of Peter Egan in the pages of Road & Track magazine.
Egan carries on the tradition of exquisite and eloquent writing in the nature of two of my other favorite motoring journalists.
That would be L.J.K. Setright, who wrote (if that simple word can be used to describe his craft) for the British Car magazine and whose prose graced the pages of many other automotive magazines.
And Denis Jenkinson, another Citizen of the Crown, whose work I became familiar with as a youth.
I think – and I would hope – that Peter Egan would be proud to be considered as equals to Setright and Jenkinson, who are both legendary and whose works are still discovered and enjoyed to this day by many readers.
Many motorcyclists have enjoyed Peter Egan’s writings in Cycle World magazine since he first appeared in those pages back in 1977.
He’s been writing ever since as a sort of stream-of-consciousness raconteur (not many of these left in today’s hyper-video sound bite society).
I also enjoy his columns, but missed the first collection in the original Leanings, first published in 2002. That book has become one of the most popular motorcycle related books in print.
Egan certainly has a unique gift; he can talk motorcycles both old and new; travel; nostalgia and just good ol’ stories that seem to ring true with everyone who reads him.
Leanings 2 contains four feature articles that first appeared in Cycle World from 2003 to 2005.
Those include “The Search for Robert Johnson”, “Where the Sidewalk Ends”, “A Thousand Miles From Nowhere” and “In the Moon of the Falling Leaves”.
The second part of the book includes a full 95 Cycle World columns that appeared in Cycle World from 1988 to 2004.
You may wonder why you should buy a book that’s basically a reprint of Cycle World columns, some of which you may have already read.
But like classic films, Egan’s writings can be enjoyed over and over, and each time you will discover something new.
This is an absolutely perfect book to take on that next coast-to-coast plane trip.
Or how about to the beach house in the summer?
Or, just keep it on the nightstand so you can read a chapter or two before bed, which will both calm you down and provide you with sweet dreams of a world full of motorcycles and good times.
Publication Date: January 2006
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