I was on the fence about keeping this book after I read it. I love Man Ray’s “Self Portrait” (highly recommended!) and although I haven’t read it in several years, I recall it talking about Montmarte with more energy and vigor than Lottman conveyed. However, this book was excellent at laying out a chronology and trying to tease out the transition from Dada to surrealism, as well as Man Ray’s role in both. It did an OK job bringing in the painters and writers along with the regular cast of Man Ray characters (Duchamp, Kiki, Lee Miller, etc.).
All in all an OK read but I left wishing it was more exciting to encapsulate all the energy and emotion floating around Paris at that time!

The book glosses over some subjects but provides a brief and interesting summary of his life and his key works. I enjoyed the flow of the text but cringed frequently at the typos or weird word choices. It seems that the translation was not very good and the book lacked an actual editor. My favorite typo was “disgarded” for “discarded” – definitely someone who learned English phonetically!
For me it’s worth keeping for the fact that it reproduces some of his most lovely work but takes up almost no space on the bookshelf.