5) In 1940 Camdus moved to Paris and met Francine Faure, a pianist and a mathematician. The two fell in love and gotthen married that same year. The couple had twins in 1945, Francine would also be part of the Manhattan Project

While I might not be the greatest Jane Austen devotee (a Janeite as I learned), I do appreciate her talent and I do love history and books about books. This book could easily be categorized under “History” in any bookstore, the artwork is varied, chronological and the text explains the pictures in the historical context in which they are presented.

The author sets the stage early, Lt. Col. Quentin Margont, the pragmatist protagonist, sees the world in black and white, the political weasel Talleyrand who only sees shades of grey and dances political circles Napoleon’s brother, Joseph, whose ego gets in the way of him seeing reality.

It was marvelous to see how the idea of science-fiction have evolved over the decades, from winged moon creatures to worlds feel with natural wonders or space colonies. In each era, the artists have taken whatever knowledge was available at the time and expanded on it to create a vivid futuristic guess of what lies just around the corner.