A decade or so after photography was first demonstrated, Mathew Brady was an eminent photographer in America, establishing a gallery/studio in New York City and being much sought-after by the celebrated and unknowns alike for his fine work. The first half of this book is a brief biography, detailing Brady's work on Civil War battlefields, the appalling shortsightedness demonstrated by the government in its non-management of that collection, and how the project left Brady bankrupt, finally dying in poverty. The second half is a Brady gallery. Many of the photographs have rarely been seen, and present a veritable Who's Who of the times. Some of the subjects 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, and Mark Twain, along with early pictures of New York City, Washington D.C., the White House, the Capitol, the Washington Monument, and Niagara Falls.