Humbug: The Art of P. T. Barnum

By Neil Harris

Categories: Biographies & Memoirs, History

Humbug (1973) is historian Neil Harris's study of the showman P. T. Barnum and his place in nineteenth-century American culture. Harris follows Barnum's career from exhibiting Joice Heth and the Feejee Mermaid to his American Museum in New York, General Tom Thumb, the tour of singer Jenny Lind and his circus. He argues that Barnum's "humbugs" worked because audiences enjoyed working out how they were being fooled, and uses him to explore popular entertainment and the public of his day.

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• Ryan Holiday: “In the last few weeks I read biographies or memoirs of: Fidel Castro, Toussaint Louverture, PT Barnum, Martin Luther, Langston Hughes, Arnold Rothstein, Wyatt Earp, George Washington, Seneca, Sammy Davis Jr, ... Da Vinci, ... Olaudah Equiano, and Joe Biden.”