How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle: Reflections of an Influential 19th Century Woman
Willard "muses with sagacity and charm, on the sport's philosophical implications."  (Publishers Weekly, February 1, 1991)  "This delightful, uplifting and unique bit of history is bound to attract both browsers and researchers."  (Booklist, February 15, 1991)  "It's a wonderful study in social change and expanding freedom for women.  (Feminist Bookstore News, February 1991)  "Her account of the bicycle as a liberating force freeing women from home and long skirts is sweetly inspiring."  (San Jose Mercury News, March 10, 1991)  "daring little classic" (Washington Post Book World, April 21, 1991)  "charming and disarming memoir"  (Los Angeles Times, March 3, 1991)"Willard took up cycling in an effort to forestall her deteriorating health in 1893, a period that coincided with the bicycle's emergence as a catalyst for sweeping social change.  'How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle' gives an appreciation of the enormity of that undertaking in the 1890s, and Willard relates her cycling tribulations with an easy wit reminiscent of Mark Twain.  Willard became a passionate cyclist and in this book she encourages other women to participate in the sport."  (Bicycle Guide, June 1991)"The book is a charming and insightful parable that relates women's mastery of 'machinery' to the mastery of their own lives. . .Willard was clever enough to see a parallel in her struggle to ride a bicycle with the larger struggle of her WCTU sisters to control their lives.  Corsets and long skirts curtailed the potential for freedom a bicycle could bring; women's mental bondage of dependence and subservience in Victorian society were equally prohibitive. . .Willard's subtlety in linking her bicycling experience to the broader issue of women's rights was her gift to her contemporaries, as well as to the generations of women that followed.  As she wrote, 'I would not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum.'"  (Sacramento Bee, March 13, 1991)"This charming essay is more than a how-to manual, for its not-so-hidden agenda encourages women to live their lives to the fullest, to engage in activities as controversial as ride a bicycle.  The book contains a series of photographs in which the heretofore sedentary Willard mounts the machine and aided by friends who help her keep her balance, begins her lesson.  The last photo shows her zipping down a byway, as free as the air." --Minneapolis Star Tribune, April 7, 1991