
This comprehensive study of the legendary showman employs diaries, letters, and business records to examine Barnum's personal and professional life--his sexual indiscretions, freak shows, and infamous hoaxes--and to debunk some of the many myths surrounding this most caricatured...


I believe hugely in advertising and blowing my own trumpet, beating the gongs, drums, to attract attention to a show, Phineas Taylor Barnum wrote to a publisher in 1860. "I don't believe in 'duping the public,' but I believe in first attracting and then pleasing them." The name...