Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism, The Mark Lynton History Prize, and the Sally Hacker Prize for the History of Technology
“A panoramic vision of cultural change” —The New York Times
Through the story of the pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge, the author of Orwell's Roses explores 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.
WINNER Commonwealth Club of California Book Award
WINNER Mark Lynton History Prize
WINNER National Book Critics Circle Awards
WINNER Spur Awards
Praise for River of Shadows:
“Never less than deeply intelligent, and often very close to inspired. It belongs to that wondrous class of books—like William Gass’s On Being Blue and Anne Carson’s Eros the Bittersweet—in which an extraordinary mind seizes hold of an unexpected topic and renders it with such confidence, subtlety and grace that one finds it hard to remember what things looked like before the book appeared in the world.” —The New York Times Book Review “Rich and rewarding . . . [Solnit] has rescued a strange, inexplicable fellow from mere histories of photography . . . a book of enormous intelligence and fascination.” —The New Republic
“Solnit has the wide-foraging mind of a great essayist and the West-besotted soul of the recording secretary for your local historical society . . . she's who Susan Sontag might have become if Sontag had never forsaken California for Manhattan . . . Solnit’s prose combines in individual paragraphs the imagery of a poet, the ideas of the theoretician, the rhythm of a thoroughbred and the force of a Southern Pacific locomotive . . . [River of Shadows] is a book whose cantering intelligence keeps it, from first to last, airborne.” —San Francisco Chronicle “A perfect example of a subject waiting—in this case for almost a century and a half—for the appropriate writer to come along to unlock its concealed meaning and unexpected relevance . . . This portrait of a man, a place, a time, a technology, an art and various other matters that elude encapsulation shines on nearly every page with rigor and gusto and is consistently a delight to read.” —The Los Angeles Times “Extraordinary . . . it is hard to do justice to Solnit's far-reaching perspective . . . Her prose, terse and poetic, makes the book a pleasurably dizzying page-turner.” —Bookforum
“Solnit is a cultural historian in the desert-mystic mode, trailing ideas like swarms of butterflies.” —Harper's Magazine
Rebecca Solnit is the author of more than twenty books, including the memoir Recollections of My Nonexistence and the nonfiction A Field Guide to Getting Lost, The Faraway Nearby, AParadise Built in Hell, River of Shadows, and Wanderlust. She is also the author of Men Explain Things to Me and many essays on feminism, activism and social change, hope, and the climate crisis. A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, she is a regular contributor to The Guardian and other publications.
View titles by Rebecca Solnit
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
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism, The Mark Lynton History Prize, and the Sally Hacker Prize for the History of Technology
“A panoramic vision of cultural change” —The New York Times
Through the story of the pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge, the author of Orwell's Roses explores 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.
Awards
WINNER Commonwealth Club of California Book Award
WINNER Mark Lynton History Prize
WINNER National Book Critics Circle Awards
WINNER Spur Awards
Praise
Praise for River of Shadows:
“Never less than deeply intelligent, and often very close to inspired. It belongs to that wondrous class of books—like William Gass’s On Being Blue and Anne Carson’s Eros the Bittersweet—in which an extraordinary mind seizes hold of an unexpected topic and renders it with such confidence, subtlety and grace that one finds it hard to remember what things looked like before the book appeared in the world.” —The New York Times Book Review “Rich and rewarding . . . [Solnit] has rescued a strange, inexplicable fellow from mere histories of photography . . . a book of enormous intelligence and fascination.” —The New Republic
“Solnit has the wide-foraging mind of a great essayist and the West-besotted soul of the recording secretary for your local historical society . . . she's who Susan Sontag might have become if Sontag had never forsaken California for Manhattan . . . Solnit’s prose combines in individual paragraphs the imagery of a poet, the ideas of the theoretician, the rhythm of a thoroughbred and the force of a Southern Pacific locomotive . . . [River of Shadows] is a book whose cantering intelligence keeps it, from first to last, airborne.” —San Francisco Chronicle “A perfect example of a subject waiting—in this case for almost a century and a half—for the appropriate writer to come along to unlock its concealed meaning and unexpected relevance . . . This portrait of a man, a place, a time, a technology, an art and various other matters that elude encapsulation shines on nearly every page with rigor and gusto and is consistently a delight to read.” —The Los Angeles Times “Extraordinary . . . it is hard to do justice to Solnit's far-reaching perspective . . . Her prose, terse and poetic, makes the book a pleasurably dizzying page-turner.” —Bookforum
“Solnit is a cultural historian in the desert-mystic mode, trailing ideas like swarms of butterflies.” —Harper's Magazine
Rebecca Solnit is the author of more than twenty books, including the memoir Recollections of My Nonexistence and the nonfiction A Field Guide to Getting Lost, The Faraway Nearby, AParadise Built in Hell, River of Shadows, and Wanderlust. She is also the author of Men Explain Things to Me and many essays on feminism, activism and social change, hope, and the climate crisis. A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, she is a regular contributor to The Guardian and other publications.
View titles by Rebecca Solnit
Table of Contents
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
