Helpful Score: 1
Well-written biography of a great American showman. Barnum established popular museums, traveling shows, and circuses. He was also a temperance lecturer and promoter of Tom Thumb and singer Jenny Lind. Enjoyable read, but I think I prefer Irving Wallace's book about Barnum.
I have not yet seen the book but Elizabeth Kolbert offers a four page essay reviewing it in The New Yorker (You Can't Make It Up, 8/5/2019 p.65) that hits the highlights. She passes on the opportunity to compare Pt. Trump to Mr. Barnum....
8/20/2020 PBS came through. This didn't have the exuberance of the biography I shared with classmates in Speech class, circa 1962, but does have its moments. Mr. Wilson's sophistication shows in his writing (Jenny Lind, for example) and he has carefully perused PT's autobiographies and recent biographies, as well as some of the contemporary sources. He takes care in evaluating them and readers today will celebrate PT's showmanship, sharing with readers his evidence that PT often left it up to the public to decide if it was humbug.
During four hours spent in a cooling center this afternoon, I enjoyed several chapters. The Joice Heth issue is given good analysis. I had forgotten that PT bought her contract and am glad that a recent scholar made such efforts to find her resting place, although unsuccessful.
I did not read of the mermaid but such things were still done in the 1950s. Gra-Y guys went to the National Orange Show in 1957 and the sideshow had other attractions for two bits--we learned our lesson after seeing one monkey.
On PT publishing the first edition of his autobiography: "Many of the negative reviews on both sides of the Atlantic were concerned, both overtly and by implication, with coarsening of public life that Barnum's book represented. His plain speech, his delight in practical jokes and silly anecdotes, his willingness to admit and forgive himself his faults--all of this punctured the gentlemanly facade of the literary establishment, even as his approach was playing into prejudices in intellectual circles, on both sides of the Atlantic, agaimnst Americans who rose in class status through mere commerce."
Notes, bibliography, and index.
8/20/2020 PBS came through. This didn't have the exuberance of the biography I shared with classmates in Speech class, circa 1962, but does have its moments. Mr. Wilson's sophistication shows in his writing (Jenny Lind, for example) and he has carefully perused PT's autobiographies and recent biographies, as well as some of the contemporary sources. He takes care in evaluating them and readers today will celebrate PT's showmanship, sharing with readers his evidence that PT often left it up to the public to decide if it was humbug.
During four hours spent in a cooling center this afternoon, I enjoyed several chapters. The Joice Heth issue is given good analysis. I had forgotten that PT bought her contract and am glad that a recent scholar made such efforts to find her resting place, although unsuccessful.
I did not read of the mermaid but such things were still done in the 1950s. Gra-Y guys went to the National Orange Show in 1957 and the sideshow had other attractions for two bits--we learned our lesson after seeing one monkey.
On PT publishing the first edition of his autobiography: "Many of the negative reviews on both sides of the Atlantic were concerned, both overtly and by implication, with coarsening of public life that Barnum's book represented. His plain speech, his delight in practical jokes and silly anecdotes, his willingness to admit and forgive himself his faults--all of this punctured the gentlemanly facade of the literary establishment, even as his approach was playing into prejudices in intellectual circles, on both sides of the Atlantic, agaimnst Americans who rose in class status through mere commerce."
Notes, bibliography, and index.
