"Mitchell's book is a treasury of episodes-generally overlooked by art history and visual studies-that turn on images that walk by themselves' and exert their own power over the living, from the resurrection of the dinosaur in the Victorian natural-history museum, to the quasi-animated statues of Antony Gormley, to the continuing vitality of the visual stereotype of racism. His account offers the most serious challenge in many years to the view that images are merely signs, ' asking only for interpretation or analysis or commentary. What images want from us is much more than that." -- Norman Bryson "Artforum".