Henri Cartier-Bresson confided in Pierre Assouline over a long period of time on the subjects of his youthful devotion to surrealism, his unending passion for drawing, the war and the prison camps, the friends and the women in his life. He even opened up his archives. Assouline gives an acute and extremely interesting account of Cartier-Bresson's life and philosophy in this vivid portrait of the man in all his complexity - his charm, inquisitiveness and arrogance, but above all, his brilliance.