The Secret Race is the new book by Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyle about the Tour de France and doping. Even if, like me, you aren't much of a cycling fan and are prepared to take a no-first-stone-from-us-sinners attitude toward whatever exactly Lance Armstrong might have done, this may be a compelling sociological study about a particular and very competitive subculture. I say "may be" because I'm not prepared to pretend to having read it. A couple of quick points from the publicity though: the first named author, Tyler Hamilton, is the former denizen of that subculture. He rode with Armstrong on 3 of those Tour de France races. He teamed up with Coyle (whose photo I have installed above) to borrow some writing chops for this project. Last weekend's New York Times Review of Books contained a piece on this result by Geoffrey Wheatcroft, who turns a nice analogy. "We are left with Armstrong, who increasingly looks like the sporting answer to ...