River of Shadows

In 1872, Eadweard Muybridge, a British photographer who landed in California during the Gold Rush, photographed a running horse. It was the first time that high-speed movement had been captured by a camera, a breakthrough that led to the birth of cinema. Rebecca Solnit's bold and original biography traces Muybridge's life - as an artist, an immigrant, and a murderer - as a prelude to California's Hollywood and Silicon Valley, two industries that remade the world.

Weaving together Muybridge's 'annihilation of time and space' with a larger story about the acceleration and industrialization of everyday life, this is a gripping story of a true pioneer and a portrait of our world buffeted by modernity.