"...They flocked to see the Diorama imitating a nearby church they could have visited in actuality for free. This is one of the great enigmas of modern life: why the representation of a thing can fascinate those who would ignore the original."

What I would call an impressionist biography of Muybridge—with as much attention given to the background of things he experienced only indirectly as those which were of primary importance. Solnit succeeds in conveying the rapidity and importance of technological changes in Muybridge's lifetime and his role in those changes, as well as telling tangential but much more interesting stories along the way. Her tendency towards the lyric occasionally undermines her arguments by making them seem too flippant and insubstantial, but overall, the depth of thought given to her subject(s) is rewarding even when it may seem unwarranted.