Charting his childhood before the Mexican Revolution through his years in a Europe immersed in the Bolshevik revolution, this vivid portrait offers a thorough examination of Diego Rivera's creative and intellectual evolution. Rivera Marin captures an essential time for Rivera before he became recognized as one of the premier artists of Mexico. During his travels through France, England, Spain, Switzerland, and Italy, he embraced the Avant-Garde that he later rejected and replaced with the nationalist and revolutionary art that became the basis for the great Mexican muralist movement. Populated by significant figures, such as Emiliano Zapata and Vladimir Lenin, Rivera Marin's book about her father's political coming of age is both the story of the man and the epic times in which he lived.