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This is not just a history of the Giro, or a rehash of famous stages, or a list of the key events in riders' lives. It's a look at the role of cycling in the history of Italy, and the associated myths that have grown up around the sport. Often, those myths are simplistic, contradictory, or just false, and yet they are a part of the history of the sport and the county.

I learned a couple of things. 1) Fascism touched everything, but cycling received only a glancing blow because Mussolini didn't particularly care about the sport. 2) When you look at the famous Italian riders in depth, it's hard to find heroes. Practically every one of them managed to tarnish their sporting legacy in one way or another. 3) Doping was prevalent in the peloton for 50 years before Armstrong, at least.

The one negative about this book is the style. To be honest, at times it seemed like chapters were cut-n-paste jobs from shorter articles. Lots of repetition of bits of information that didn't need to be repeated, and some chapters seemingly starting over in the middle (the chapter on Coppi and Bartali particularly). This did prevent me from getting in the flow as I was reading, but I still found something to think about after I put the book down each time.