Have you met Eadweard Muybridge? I loved this extraordinary man, I identified with him at times, David Stansfield makes him so alive, so human, so present... I savored the different levels of the text offered by the author. They complement themselves, nourish themselves, enrich themselves: the child aching for love; the grown-up lover, sincere and immature, murdered and murdering; the father of pure invention at the mercy of his brilliant, tyrannical sponsor; the genius embraced by both the artistic and the scientific community; a man both of and ahead of his time who meets the brilliant opportunist Edison, who is a friend of Nadar, of the obese and charming Prince Edward, of the Lumiere brothers... This is a book about Talent, about the strange proximity of the artistic and the scientific world, about Love, about the World at the end of the 19th century and the ties that bind the cultural elites of America and Europe. This is a jewel. Cecile Moulard, Managing Director of Amazon.com France"