Surprising serious history of earlynphotography and Brady'ls career, followed by a wonderful set of photographs, not just the famous Civil War ones, but many other figures from the period, actors, writers etc. ( )

I had always appreciated Mathew Brady's haunting Civil War photographs, and his photographs of Abraham Lincoln, and had thought that this was the extent of his accomplishments. This is dedinitely untrue; he was the eminent photographer in America just a decade or so after photography was first demonstrated. Interestingly, Brady learned much of the art from Samuel F.B. Morse, inventor of the telegraph, who himself learned it from Louis Daguerre in France. Ten years later Mathew Brady knocked on the door of the White House to take the first ever photograph of a sitting President,James K. Polk. Brady quickly rose to the top of the fledgling group of practitioners, establishing a gallery/studio in New York City, and becoming much sought after by the celebrated and unknowns alike for his fine work. Ironically, Brady's eyes would worsen over the years, forcing him to delegate much of his work to assistants whom he had trained. The author notes this, only ascribing a particular photograph to Brady alone when he was sure of it. If Brady had never ventured upon the Civil War battlefields, nor met Lincoln, he would still be known today for his pioneering work in photography, and his portraits of the famous and not-so-famous of the day. When the Civil War broke out, he obtained permission from the Secretary of War to take his cumbersome equipment to the scenes and document the war. The government would not help financially with this, so he was forced to expend his large amassed fortune for the project, eventually bankrupting himself. Amazingly and infuriatingly, for decades afterward the government would not spend the funds to properly store, print or display the fragile and massive collection, and many invaluable wet prints were lost to accident, fire and the ravages of time before anything was done. The first half of the book is textual biography; the second half is a Brady (and a few others) gallery. Many of the pictures are indeed haunting, especially several of Lincoln, Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant. But there are many fascinating photographs displayed here, many for the first time, a veritable Who's Who of the times. Some of the subjects here include John Quincy Adams, the walking dead from Andersonville Prison, Susan B. Anthony, P.T. Barnum and his "freak show", Clara Barton, John Wilkes Booth, Brady himself, John Brown, George Custer, Jefferson Davis, Stephen Douglas, Thomas A. Edison, Andrew Jackson, Edgar Allan Poe, Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and early pictures of New York City, Washington D.C., the White House, the Capitol, the Washington Monument and Niagara Falls. Brady died in poverty, almost forgotten; it is a nice touch that the author comes full circle by telling in his epilogue that the Army Air Force reconaissance plane is named the Mathew B. Brady. A fascinating and informative look at a true giant in American history and photography. ( )