Neil Peart's Books

"In September of 1985, I joined that bicycle tour in China, and carried a journal and microcassette recorder with me, but deliberately no camera, experimenting with the idea of seeing the journey entirely through my own lenses, and trying to put it down in words. After that experience, I was moved to spend some time refining the narrative to a modest degree, and printed up a small private edition of fifty copies for fellow travelers and friends. Riding The Golden Lion led to other bicycle journeys, from Munich to Istanbul, from Barcelona to Bordeaux, from Calgary to Vancouver, and other little books: The Orient Express, Pedals Over The Pyrenees, Raindance Over the Rockies...Then came Africa, with an initial camping safari and Kilimanjaro climb that became the african drum (fashionable lower case, that one), followed by a bicycle tour in West Africa which would finally produce a book I was ready to publish, The Masked Rider." - Neil Peart, Traveling Music

Riding The Golden Lion
Privately published by Neil Peart in 1985
Limited Edition of 50 copies
39 pages, b/w photos

Pedals Over The Pyrenees: Spain And Spokes And Trains
Privately published by Neil Peart in 1988
Limited Edition of 65 copies
21 pages

the african drum
Privately published by Neil Peart in 1988
Limted edition of 100 copies
205 pages, b/w photos

The Masked Rider: Cycling In West Africa

First Edition (click for image)
The Cumberland Press, 1990
Privately distributed by Neil Peart
Limited Edition of 50 copies
167 pages, b/w photos Second Edition
Publicly published by Nimbus Publishing, Ltd., 1996
286 pages, b/w photos
ISBN: 1895900026 Third Edition
ECW Press, June 2004
260 pages, b/w photos
ISBN: hardback - 1550226673; paperback - 1550226657
"Cycling is a good way to travel anywhere, but especially in Africa. You are independent and mobile, and yet travel at people speed--fast enough to travel on to another town in the cooler morning hours, but slow enough to meet people: the old farmer at the roadside who raises his hand and says, 'You are welcome,' the tireless women who offer a smile to a passing cyclist, the children whose laughter transcends the humblest home."
So begins the text of Neil Peart's extraordinary journal about riding a bicycle on the roads and off the beaten track in West Africa. The Masked Rider is about the bike trek and the people who travel along with the author, including literary sidekicks Aristotle and Vincent Van Gogh. Sometimes it's a story of a tour of hell-Dante on a bicycle-as he suffered the pains of dysentery and stares down the muzzle of a drunk soldier's machine gun. Other times it's a journey of exalted discovery and African adventure of the highest calibre.

"Drumbeats"
by Neil Peart & Kevin J. Anderson
A short story included in the anthology Shock Rock II
Pocket Books, February 1994
ISBN 0671870882
out of print (used book purchase)

"The theme of the anthology is 'horror stories about rock & roll.' I got the idea for 'Drumbeats,' about a rock drummer bicycling through Africa between concert tours, and some weird stuff that happens to him. I had the story, but I didn't have the details...neither the details about Africa nor the details about life as a rock star. But Neil did, so I asked if I could lift sections of description from his journals, and get some background from him. He thought it was a cool idea and gave me permission to do so. I drafted up the story, mailed him a disk, and he gave it a polish and added more details. I did a final polish and sent it off to the editor, who promptly accepted it. It's a genuine collaboration -- I'd say about half the words in the story are Neil's, half mine, and the tale really works, I think. Neil likes it." - Kevin J. Anderson, via email to the National Midnight Star's Jimmy Lang, September 1993 "...Kevin did all the work; I just supplied some African background and French dialogue." - Neil Peart, "Neil's Picks for Quality Reading, Issue #3", Fall 2005

Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road
ECW Press, June 1, 2002
406 pages
ISBN: hardback - 1895900506; paperback - 1550225480

Within a ten-month period, Neil Peart suffered family losses so devastating that they left him a ghost — physically a man but with nothing. No hope, meaning, faith, or desire to keep living. One year after the first tragedy, Neil was choosing between life and his own death. Finally, all he could decide was motion. He got on his BMW R1100GS motorcycle, and over the next 14 months, rode 55,000 miles, in search of a reason to live. On a journey of escape, exile, and exploration, he travelled from Quebec to Alaska, down the Canadian and American coasts and western regions, to Mexico and Belize, and finally back to Quebec. While riding "the Healing Road," Neil recorded in his journals his progress and setbacks in the grieving/healing process, and the pain of constantly reliving his losses. He also recorded with dazzling, colourful, entertaining, and moving artistry, the enormous range of his travel adventures, from the mountains to the sea, from the deserts to Arctic ice, and the dozens of memorable people, characters, friends, and relatives he met along the way, and who increasingly contributed to his healing and sense of meaning and purpose. He begins the journey with nothing, "the Ghost Rider." What he finally attains is joy, love, and indelible memories of the most extraordinary journey of his life. Ghost Rider is a bold, brilliantly written, intense, exciting, and ultimately triumphant narrative memoir from a gifted writer and musician, who started out as a man reduced to trying to stay alive by staying on the move. Nominated for the biography prize category of the second annual Great Literary Awards sponsored by the Writers' Trust of Canada, the award was given to Warren Cariou for Lake of the Prairies: A Story of Belonging.

Traveling Music: Playing Back the Soundtrack to My Life and Times
ECW Press, June 2004
440 pages
ISBN: hardback - 1550226649; paperback -1550226665

Neil Peart decided to drive his BMW Z-8 automobile from L.A. to Big Bend National Park, in Southwest Texas. As he sped along "between the gas-gulping SUVs and asthmatic Japanese compacts clumping in the left lane, and the roaring, straining semis in the right," he acted as his own DJ, lining up the CDs chronologically and according to his possible moods.
"Not only did the music I listened to accompany my journey, but it also took me on sidetrips, through memory and fractals of associations, threads reaching back through my whole life in ways I had forgotten, or had never suspected...Sifting through those decades and those memories, I realized that I wasn’t interested in recounting the facts of my life in purely autobiographical terms, but rather...in trying to unweave the fabric of my life and times. As one who was never much interested in looking back, because always too busy moving forward, I found that once I opened those doors to the past, I became fascinated with the times and their effect on me. The songs and the stories I had taken for granted suddenly had a resonance that had clearly echoed down the corridors of my entire life, and I felt a thrill of recognition, and the sense of a kind of adventure. A travel story, but not so much about places, but about music and memories."

Roadshow: Landscape With Drums, A Concert Tour By Motorcycle
Rounder Books, September 25, 2006
380 pages ISBN: hardback - 1579401422; paperback - 1579401457

"In 2004, the veteran rock band Rush launched their Thirtieth-Anniversary Tour, performing fifty-seven shows in nine countries, in front of 544,525 people. Drummer and lyricist Neil Peart launched his own parallel tour, riding between those fifty-seven shows on his BMW motorcycle. From Los Angeles to Nashville, Salt Lake City to Key West, Prague to Berlin, Peart covered 21,000 miles, through nineteen countries. Along the way he kept a journal of his impressions, writing about those countries, and those fifty-seven shows, with the aim of documenting the tour as "the biggest journey of all in my restless existence: the life of a touring musician."
"This book works on different levels...On the one hand, it became the logical culmination of so many desires to try and explain what it is really like to be a touring musician and the kinds of personal and artistic conflicts that exist in trying to survive and make a living doing something creatively satisfying." - Neil Peart, ChartAttack.com, November 10, 2006
First announced by his publishers in 2007, Neil Peart had intended to release The Roadshow Illustrated Companion. However, plans for this companion book were later canceled.

Far And Away: A Prize Every Time
ECW Press, April 1, 2011
260 pages ISBN: hardback - 9781770410589

"Following in the tradition of Ghost Rider and Traveling Music, Rush drummer Neil Peart relates nearly four years of band tours, road trips, and personal discoveries in this introspective travelogue. From the ups and downs of a professional artist to the birth of a child, this revealing narrative recounts 22 adventures from rock's foremost drummer, biker enthusiast, husband and father. Both playful and insightful, Peart's love of drumming and the open road weaves throughout the stories as Neil explores horizons that are both physical and spiritual, sharing his observations about nature, society, and the self. Full-color photos round-out this tour of the open road that will resonate with Rush fans and motorcycle enthusiasts alike."