The Lowrys, a former museum director and a photographer, respectively, have produced a useful and well-crafted addition to the literature of early photography. Ample text, neither dense nor too spare, apprises the interested reader of the significant role of Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre in the progress of photography toward an enduring, approachable medium. Daguerre schemed within the parameters of early photography, stretching them a bit to invent the process that would bear his name. There is much charm in the daguerreotypes that illustrate this book, which the Lowrys chose carefully from the large and exceptional collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum. Their selections illustrate how the process preserved images of people, places, and things on "the silver canvas" and how these works, often intended to be more documentary than artistic, built an aesthetic within constraints of light, equipment, and subject. Recommended for general collections.‘David Bryant, New Canaan P.L., CT (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.