Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

From KCRW, Santa Monica, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today I'm fortunate to have as my guest, Rebecca Solnit, whose book River of Shadows from Penguin

is about Edward Moibridge and the consequences of the analytic that allowed him as a photographer

to chart space by breaking it down into increments of motion. This book is only part biography,

although it is a biography. It's also a book about landscape, space, the beginning of the movies. In other words, it's an intellectual biography, a rare kind of book. Were there models for this kind of thing for you?

There were some. For example, there's a wonderful book called Other Powers about Victoria

Woodhull, who was part of both the feminist movement and the spiritualist movement in the United

States, and was at the center of a group of other interesting characters. That was an interesting

book for me, and I think there were a number of others that were interesting, but that was the one that

stood out most.

One of the previous books that had been sent to me was von der Lust, a history of walking,

and it fascinated me because it seems that one book leads directly to the next.

Every book for me is an investigation that answers the questions I started with and leaves me

with new questions. And for me, there's a clear trajectory from the first book, certainly up through

River of Shadows, although there's some scenic detours too. And wanderlust is a history of walking,

which might seem a little bit different than a history of the man who laid the groundwork for motion

pictures in California in the 1870s. But the book of... a little bit different than a history of the man who laid the groundwork for motion pictures

...