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.

8 of 9 found the following review helpful:

If you read only one book on motorcycling . . .  May 14, 2002
By Jamie Mays
...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.

5 of 6 found the following review helpful:

Informative and enjoyable read  Apr 03, 2002

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.

2 of 3 found the following review helpful:

Participant-observation as Being There  Feb 10, 2003
By Reed D. Riner
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.

Bike Lust  Oct 06, 2010
By Sam Adams

The author, Barbara Joans, is an anthropologist in Oakland California, originally from New York, and rides a Harley-Davidson Low Rider. This book, published in 2001, is a kind of anthropological look at Harley riders, both men and women (her main concern, as the subtitle shows, is with women), and the variety of viewpoints and value judgments within the Harley culture. A lot of the book is reporting on conversations Joans had with Harley riders (men and women) and passengers (women), but she doesn't exclude writing about her own views or experiences. She has found or created a collection of categories through which she classifies everyone in the Harley culture, and this may help some readers, or may seem misguided.

The people she spoke with, of course, had their own sense of identity and of how they viewed others associated in one way or another with Harley-Davidson. As is typical in any culture or sub-culture there are those who want everyone to be the same, meaning exactly like themselves, all others being viewed as inauthentic to some degree. They judge others by a personal checklist of attitudes, experiences, and skills which they associate with the authentic biker and which they themselves have acquired over the course of their riding life, disdaining those riders who do not seem to aspire with the same vigor (or not to aspire at all) to those same attitudes, experiences, and skills. The pinnacle of authenticity, for some riders, is the outlaw biker. For others, it is a few degrees less volatile. Everyone seems to agree that independence, integrity, devotion, and passion are key characteristics of a true biker. Without these, one isn't even a motorcycle enthusiast. The difference between those who see their motorcycle as transportation (like a car or truck) and those who see it as recreation (like a boat or snowmobile) is, I think, relevant.

Joans focuses her attention (she may have not thought the distinction was important; I do) on people who routinely participate in group runs and events (including group camping during a run, the "biker bar", and social rallies) and whose self-identity is based as much upon that ongoing fact of their riding life as upon their relation to a particular H-D bike. It is this collective behavior and how individuals define and describe themselves within it that Joans, as an anthropologist, has reported upon in her book.


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