River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West [Paperback]

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism and the Mark Lynton History Prize

Through the story of the pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge, the author ofMen Explain Things to Meexplores what it was about California in the late 19th-century that enabled it to become such a center of technological and cultural innovation

The world as we know it today began in California in the late 1800s, and Eadweard Muybridge had a lot to do with it. This striking assertion is at the heart of Rebecca Solnit’s new book, which weaves together biography, history, and fascinating insights into art and technology to create a boldly original portrait of America on the threshold of modernity. The story of Muybridge—who in 1872 succeeded in capturing high-speed motion photographically—becomes a lens for a larger story about the acceleration and industrialization of everyday life. Solnit shows how the peculiar freedoms and opportunities of post–Civil War California led directly to the two industries—Hollywood and Silicon Valley—that have most powerfully defined contemporary society.River of ShadowsThe Annihilation of Time and Space
The Man with the Cloudy Skies
Lessons of the Golden Spike
Standing on the Brink
Lost River
A Day in the Life, Two Deaths, More Photographs
Skinning the City
Stopping Time
The Artist in Motion and at Rest
From the Center of the World to the Final Frontier

Chronology
Notes
Acknowledgments
Photograph Credits
Index

Praise forRiver of Shadows:

“Never less than deeply intelligent, and often very close to inspired.  It belongs to that wondrous class of books – like William Gass’sOn Being Blueand Anne Carson’sEros the Bittersweet– in which an extraordinary mind seizes hold of an unexpected topic and renders it with such confidence, subtlety and grace  that one fil£§