The Statue of Liberty is probably the world’s most famous monument. Its meaning has evolved through history and time: initially it was meant to be a powerful symbol of French American friendship, then it came to symbolize the United States itself, and finally it has come to represent the flow of immigration and freedom in the world.

We think we know the Statue, as it is so familiar to us, but it hides a number of interesting secrets ... This book invites the reader to see behind the curtain, to go inside the myth, outside the rules and History. We will step back into Europe’s past to understand the fantastic dream that America represented for immigrants in the 19th century, with the Republican constitution of the USA contrasting with the empires of the Old World. We need to understand the men and women, American and European, industrialists and workers together.

The adventure would take up most of Bartholdi’s life as well as those of some of his more famous allies: in the USA, Presidents Grant and Cleveland, the newspaper baron Joseph Pulitzer and the rubber magnate Richard Butler; in France the lawyer Edouard de Laboulaye, the entrepreneur Ferdinand de Lesseps, the architect Gustave Eiffel ... 
And we meet someone more discreet but incredibly effective at raising funds: Adolphe Salmon, an ancestor of the author and a French emigrant to New York. Salmon became a close friend and representative of the sculptor Bartholdi – as well as his wife Sarah, the young American woman who posed for the face of the Statue.