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Written by eminent figures in the art world, the book illuminates Daumier's success as a political and social satirist, showing how he identified with the dispossessed, the poor, and the oppressed. The authors point out that lithography was Daumier's weapon in humorous attacks on patronage (Gargantua) and in stark exposures of injustice (Rue Transnonain), while his paintings and drawings recorded scenes of emigration (The Fugitives), and public transport (The Third-Class Carriage). Daumier's sculpture parodied political abuses (Ratapoil) and caricatured pompous and self-important public figures (The Celebrites from La Caricature and Le Charivari), and his watercolors captured his disdain for lawyers and judges (The Speech for the Defense) and his empathy for the poor (The Soup). With lavish reproductions, each accompanied by apparatus, commentar
