River of Shadows by Rebecca Solnit, Viking, $25.95, ISBN 0670031763* Reviewed by Mike Holderness
YOU would never have heard of Edward Muggeridge if he hadn’t left sleepy Kingston upon Thames and headed for California in the 1850s. There he reinvented himself as Eadweard Muybridge, and went on to play a major part in fashioning the modern world.
Muybridge is best known as the photographer behind those grainy pictures proving that a galloping horse lifts all four hooves off the ground at once. But in River of Shadows, cultural historian Rebecca Solnit explores his other achievements. He was an accomplished and…
