The Gates of Hell: Rodin's Passion in Stone is not just another biography of Rodin. There are many excellent ones already. Rather, it is an attempt to understand the sculptor, after immersion in his works, by listening to his own words and those spoken about him. For Rodin was more than a sculptor of genius. He had the imagination and the courage to search for the truth, not only with his artist's hands, but with the penetrating gaze and mastery of the word that define the writer. His book Les Cathedrals de France and his hundreds of letters offer a new close-up of the artist, both visual and verbal. His musings on art and on life, and his contemporaries' views of him, form a biographer's trove. This rich assemblage of words, like a hoard of tiny fragments of stone and glass, when pieced together, form a mosaic likeness of an artist who was himself a story teller in stone.