Sign-In
Cart
The Spark: A Narrative History of the Life of Marshall "Major" Taylor
Paperback
Series: The Fastest Human on Earth, Book 1
Biographies GeneralAthletesCycling
Publisher: Inkylines & Words
Published: Sep 1 2026
Pages: 306
Weight: 0.91
Height: 0.69 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
The rulebook had no line for a boy that fast. So they wrote one the week after he beat their best man clean.
He was born in 1878 outside Indianapolis, the son of a coachman, and before he could read, he learned the hardest lesson of his life: that America will love a Black boy on loan and take the loan back whenever it likes. A wealthy family takes him in as a playmate for their own son, dresses him like one of their own, teaches him to ride, and sends him home again the moment the friendship stops being convenient. He keeps the bicycle. He never forgets the lesson.
A white bicycle maker named Louis Birdie Munger watches a colored boy fly past grown men on a track built to keep him out, and does something no sane businessman of 1895 would do: he bets his whole reputation on him. Munger takes the boy east to Worcester, Massachusetts, teaches him about the machine, down to the bearing and the gear ratio, and puts him in front of the fastest amateurs in New England to see what happens. What happens is that they cannot hold the wheel.
Worcester gives him a church, a congregation, and a vow made to a dying mother that he will never once race on a Sunday, a vow that will cost him titles for the rest of his career and that he will keep anyway. It gives him something else too: the Six Day races, sleepless, brutal endurance riding that breaks grown men's minds on the boards, and a rival's hands closing around his throat mid race in Taunton while the crowd watches and does nothing. He crosses the line first anyway. Letters arrive from the South promising to kill him if he trains where he is not wanted. He reads them, and he leaves, and he keeps riding.
By nineteen, he is the most admired and most despised man in American cycling, a professional with a growing shelf of scandalized headlines and an engine for a body, standing at the exact hinge between a hard boyhood and a reign nobody in his bloodline could have dreamed up. The gates are still locked. He is about to ride through them anyway.
He was the fastest thing on two wheels before he was old enough to vote. This is how the spark caught.
THE FASTEST HUMAN ON EARTH follows Marshall Major Taylor across three volumes and a lifetime, from an Indianapolis boyhood to the summit of the cycling world and the long reckoning that followed, each volume anchored to the documented record of a champion his country was so slow to remember.
Also from
Williams, Carl
One Question Deeper: 280 Questions and 560 Follow-Ups That Take You Beyond Small Talk
Williams, Carl
Paperback
One Question Deeper: Mothers & Daughters. 280 Questions and 560 Follow-Ups for Mothers and Daughters at Every Age
Williams, Carl
Paperback
One Question Deeper: Family & Road Trip. 280 Questions and 560 Follow-Ups for Every Seat in the Car
Williams, Carl
Paperback
Homemade Vinegar - A Beginner's Guide: Infusing Vinegars at Home & Turning Kitchen Scraps into Delicious Flavours
Williams, Carl
Paperback
One Question Deeper: Marriage. 280 Questions and 560 Follow-Ups for the Life You Built Together
Williams, Carl
Paperback
What To Do When You Don't Have $500: Surviving the Bills That Won't Wait and the Cash That Isn't There
Williams, Carl
Paperback
One Question Deeper: First Dates & New Friends. 280 Questions and 560 Follow-Ups for Getting Past Small Talk
Williams, Carl
Paperback
What To Do When the Noise Won't Stop: Living After Survival, When Quiet Feels Unsafe
Williams, Carl
Paperback
Unmasking the Lie: How Black Communities Can Heal from Gaslighting and Reclaim Their Power
Williams, Carl
Paperback
Spice Mixes & Curry Pastes: Homemade Blends for Authentic Flavour in Every Dish
Williams, Carl
Paperback
Under Cloak of Night: A Novel of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion
Williams, Carl
Paperback
What To Do When You Don't Have $500 Surviving the Bills That Won't Wait and the Cash That Isn't There
Williams, Carl
Paperback
The First Uniform: A Novel of Freedom, Dust, and the Birth of the Buffalo Soldiers
Williams, Carl
Paperback
D-Day and the Volcanic Dust: A Novel of the Montford Point Marines at Iwo Jima
Williams, Carl
Paperback
The Fight to Serve: A Novel of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion
Williams, Carl
Paperback
Curry House Sides & Starters: Bhajis, pakoras, samosas, kebabs and chutneys - crisp, light, and reliable every time
Williams, Carl
Paperback
Jam, Jelly & Marmalade: A Complete Beginner's Guide to Foolproof Preserves, Curds & Chutneys
Williams, Carl
Paperback
30-Minute Indian Curries for Busy People: Quick, Flavour-Packed Recipes You Can Make Any Night of the Week
Williams, Carl
Paperback
One Question Deeper: Parents & Teens. 280 Questions and 560 Follow-Ups for Conversations That Go Both Ways
Williams, Carl
Paperback
The Beginner's Guide to Gut Health: Fermented Foods That Heal - A Simple Guide to Better Digestion, Immunity, and Energy
Williams, Carl
Paperback
The Price of Loyalty: A Novel of Accusation, Migration, and How Many Sacrifices One People Can Make
Williams, Carl
Paperback
The Beginner's Guide to Composting: Turn Waste into Garden Gold - Simple, Proven Home Methods
Williams, Carl
Paperback
Steppin' Out II Black, Free, and Global: A Practical Guide to Life Beyond U.S. Borders
Williams, Carl
Paperback
What to Do When the Noise Won't Stop: Living After Survival, When Quite Feels Unsafe
Williams, Carl
Paperback
Money In The Gaps: A Field Guide to Turning System Failures into opportunities
Williams, Carl
Paperback
One Question Deeper: Mothers & Sons. 280 Questions and 560 Follow-Ups for Mothers and Sons, from the Teen Years On
Williams, Carl
Paperback
One Question Deeper: At Work. 280 Questions and 560 Follow-Ups for Better Conversations at Work
Williams, Carl
Paperback
Also in
Biographies General
Bluesland: Portraits of Thirteen Major American Blues Masters
Toby Byron (ED.)
Pete Welding (ED.)
Hardcover
Karl Popper - The Formative Years, 1902 1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna
Hacohen, Malachi Haim
Hardcover
Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man
Trump, Mary L.
Hardcover
The Children of Athena: Greek Intellectuals in the Age of Rome: 150 Bc0-400 AD
Freeman, Charles
Hardcover
Make It a Double: From Wretched to Wondrous: Tales of One Woman's Lifelong Discovery of Whisky
Sackier, Shelley
Hardcover
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
Isaacson, Walter
Hardcover
Agents of Chaos: Thomas King Forçade, High Times, and the Paranoid End of the 1970s
Howe, Sean
Hardcover
An Enemy Such as This: Larry Casuse and the Fight for Native Liberation in One Family on Two Continents Over Three Centuries
Correia, David
Hardcover
Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World
Cooper, Christian
Hardcover
Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work: The Rise of Womens Political Culture, 1830-1900
Sklar, Kathryn Kish
Paperback
The Secret Life of the Savoy: Glamour and Intrigue at the World's Most Famous Hotel
Williams, Olivia
Paperback
The Devil's Diary: Alfred Rosenberg and the Stolen Secrets of the Third Reich
Wittman, Robert K.
Kinney, David
Paperback
The Badger: The Life of Bernard Hinault and the Legacy of French Cycling
Fotheringham, William
Paperback
Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything
Ehrenreich, Barbara
Paperback
The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy: A Family Memoir of Scandal and Greed in the Meat Industry
Cherington, Gretchen
Paperback
My Own Devices: True Stories from the Road on Music, Science, and Senseless Love
Dessa Wander
Hardcover
How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay: Tips and Tricks That Kept Me Alive, Happy, and Creative in Spite of Myself
Lawson, Jenny
Hardcover
Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice
Giuffre, Virginia Roberts
Hardcover
A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon
Fedarko, Kevin
Paperback
Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast
Colloff, Pamela
Hardcover
Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground
Dohrn, Zayd Ayers
Hardcover