Books for pedestrians, and some thoughts on bicyles

Looking through old editions of The Economist, I found interesting book reviews that I want to remind myself of in the future. One book is called The Lost Art of Walking: The History, Science, Philosophy, and Literature of Pedestrianism (2008) by Geoff Nicholson, another one is What I talk About When I Talk About Running (2008) by Haruki Murakami, currently one of my favorite authors.
Due to a "weak lung" I am not a great runner but find the topic fascinating.
As to the footwear, I saw an article with nice models, some of them even ecological, on the web of Intelligent Life, the lifestyle edition of the above mentioned weekly, "The skeptical shopper examines trainers for men". The link is http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/content/intelligent-life/heel

I used to go around a lot by bicycle but in our hilly region that is a very strenous pasttime. In an article on Giant Manufacturing of Taiwan I found an interesting bit of information that I fully believe: "Each market has its own idiosyncracies. Europeans mainly use bikes for commuting, but have the odd habit of ignoring models made explicitly for that purpose in favour of sleekier, faster models which are then expensively modified." ("On your bike," The Economist, September 20th 2008, p. 67)
In Barcelona one can observe an astonishing number of people going around on stylish Brompton folding bicycles; in Germany their simplest model costs around 875,- EUR. (I tried to copy a picture from their website but I did not succeed.)