
Some books are a challenge to get through because they sugggest so many interesting images and ideas that are easy to follow through in your own head when you should be paying attention to the text. This was true for my experience with this anecdote-filled book. Beginning around the time of Descartes in the 17th Century and winding up sometime around the talkie revolution in Hollywood, Ms Wood's micro-history of automated dolls entertains too well to feel like a substantial read. Yet, in the days since I last put it down I'm more convinced that it is a neccessary book - especially if you're interested in the development of humans' understanding of the senses, which is a theme more suggested at than actually taken on by the author.
For this reader, it's when Ms. Wood links her history of automated puppets to the pre-history of the cinema in the late 19th Century and motion-perception that the book leaps into a higher frame of intrigue.