Virtual Book Launch: Sprinting Through No Man’s Land by Adin Dobkin in conversation with Phil Klay

Thursday Jul 01, 2021
7:00 pm - 8:00 pm

POWERHOUSE Arena
28 Adams Street (Corner of Adams & Water Street across from the Archway)
Brooklyn , NY 11201

This event is virtual! Registration link here!

PLEASE NOTE: Submitting an RSVP for this event DOES NOT guarantee entrance. This is a free-access event — entrance will be on a first-come, first-served basis.

About the Book.

“Astonishing. With beautiful prose, compelling narrative and meticulous research, Adin Dobkin does far more than just record the history of a race—he conjures an entire world reeling in the aftermath of World War I.”—Phil Klay, winner of the National Book Award and author of Missionaries

“Beautifully written, compellingly told, Adin Dobkin weaves together a masterful narrative of war, returning, and the resilience of the human spirit.”—Elliot Ackerman, National Book Award Finalist and author of Red Dress in Black and White

“Journalist Dobkin debuts with a novelistic blow-by-blow account of the first Tour de France run after WWI, shining light on the wartime experiences of its racers, organizers, and observers…. Dobkin profiles competitors including Frenchman Eugène Christophe, whose commitment to finishing the race after he lost the lead while stopping to repair his bike’s broken frame captured the country’s imagination, and vividly describes arduous ascents, rubble-strewn streets, and the crowds that lined the route, waving flags and shouting encouragement. The result is an immersive look at the mythical power of sports to unite and inspire.” –Publishers Weekly

“Vivid and inspiring. A century ago, in a brutal race like no other, cyclists faced war-torn roads and their own demons, and Dobkin spins through their tale in a sweet gear, showing the power of sport and the resilience of the heart.”—Jason Fagone, bestselling author of The Woman Who Smashed Codes

“A moving and deeply researched book documenting the Tour de France’s rebirth after the Great War. Dobkin’s prose is lyric and by turns intricate and sweeping. He brilliantly captures Europe’s collective longing to rebuild through a competition whose epic terms and improbable cast of characters speak to the hope and uncertainty that defined a generation devastated by violence. More than a chronicle of sport, this is an incredible story of how the mind and body reckon with the scars of war.”—Jen Percy, author of Demon Camp: The Strange and Terrible Saga of a Soldier’s Return from War

In 2020 the Tour de France, the world’s most prestigious and competitive bike race, was postponed from July to August due to the global pandemic. This delay had only happened twice before: once at the outset of World War I and once during World War II. On the other side of each historic decision, Tour organizers struggled to re-create the unique event that has, over its 117-year history, been met by observers with awe and nausea in equal measure, whether at the efforts of the few cyclists who accepted the Tour’s interminable lengths or in more recent doping scandals—long part of the Tour’s history—that tarnished the race’s image. In all instances, the competitive spirit of the Tour and the resolve of the race and its founder have prevailed.In his first book, SPRINTING THROUGH NO MAN’S LAND: Endurance, Tragedy, and Rebirth in the 1919 Tour de France, Adin Dobkin tells the inspiring, heart-pumping true story of soldiers turned cyclists and the historic 1919 Tour, the second-longest in history and arguably its most grueling. The extraordinary event helped to restore a war-torn country and its people.

On June 29, 1919, one day after the Treaty of Versailles brought about the end of World War I, nearly seventy cyclists embarked on the thirteenth Tour de France. From Paris, the war-weary men rode down the western coast on a race that would trace the country’s border, through seaside towns and mountains to the ghostly Western Front. Traversing a cratered postwar landscape and roads destroyed by battle, the cyclists faced near-impossible odds and the psychological scars of war. Most of the athletes had arrived straight from the front, where so many fellow countrymen, and some of their former competitors in previous Tours, had suffered or died. They confronted a route the modern Tour cyclist couldn’t fathom, more ultramarathon than weeks of sprints, where success was measured by just finishing the race at all. Competitors looked at stages up to 482 kilometers long, for a total of 5,560 kilometers (or 3,455 miles) over four weeks, on roads sometimes cratered by artillery shells. They traveled without assistance: they were required to complete repairs on their own; they had only one bike frame to use; and, due to postwar shortages, they often had to source their own food and drink. The cyclists’ perseverance and tolerance for pain would be tested in this grueling competition.

Dobkin’s depictions of the myriad characters surrounding the race are vivid and scene-stealing: from the opening pages, where we meet Henri Desgrange, the domineering editor of L’Auto and organizer of the Tour de France, who trained soldiers from the newspaper’s offices before joining them himself, at age 53, to two of the race’s fiercest veteran competitors: 33-year-old Belgian cyclist Firmin Lambot, who had seen his country occupied in the preceding years, and 34-year-old Eugéne Christophe, a wartime mechanic, who just barely lost the 1913 Tour in a tragic accident. The pair would battle back and forth for the 1919 title. As the cyclists trace a path around France, Dobkin intersperses their tale with portraits of those who watched, like the women who had found factory jobs to replace men who had left for the Western Front, all the while hoping suffrage would come at war’s end, and the African American volunteers who hoped to escape racism in the American South by making their way to Europe at the battle’s start.

An inspiring true story of human endurance, SPRINTING THROUGH NO MAN’S LAND traces the race of a lifetime and explores how regular but extraordinary people are able to rebuild and unite after catastrophe.

About The Author.

Adin Dobkin is a writer and journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic, the Paris Review, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among other publications. Born in Santa Barbara, California, Dobkin received his MFA from Columbia University. He is the co-host of the podcast War Stories, which looks at warfare’s development through the accounts of individuals at various points in history.

About the Moderator.

Phil Klay, a National Book Award-winner and veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, is the author of Missionaries and teaches at Fairfield University’s MFA program.