Customer Reviews

Freak Babylon: An Illustrated History of Teratology & Freakshows

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If you already own Jack Hunter's book "Inside Teradome" then you won't need to buy "Freak Babylon". The publishers simply enlarged the print and the photos in the teratology section of "Inside Teradome", called it a new book and gave it a new name. Kind of deceptive, I think. But perhaps, with this review, I can save someone else from throwing their money away like I did.

Might be nice to actually read about the book, rather than the previous reviewer's negligence, so here goes: "Freak Babylon" is brimful of astonishing photos and highly informative text. As good a concise and visually stunning history of its subject as you will find. Good to know that parts of it have been published before, but I for one don't own the other book mentioned, and I'm sure millions of others don't either. "Freak Babylon" is a fantastic document in its own right and I'm glad it's been published.

Great read and tons of pictures. If you get this, get the movies Freaks as well. This book covers a lot of the actors that were in it, and it's a good movie too.

...i've never read this book, nor am i familiar with the author - never heard of either one of them until about fifteen minutes ago - but i CAN tell you that the photo on the cover to this edition is a TOTAL fake! the young lady in the picture is a pin-up model from the mid- 1950s... her name is (as of yet) unknown - but she is known in several vintage collector's circles as 'unknown007'... ...there are MANY pictures of her around the web as well as in REPUTABLE books of photography such as: 'cheesecake! the rotenberg collection' (taschen, 1999) and dian hanson's *breast bible* 'the big book of breasts' (taschen, 2006), among a few others... ...punch-line is: there are many images of this model easily available and in NOT ONE single image is it apparent that she has *three* breasts and is, in no way, a *freak* as suggested by this cover 'art' (which is even more prominent on the cover of the so-called 'revised' edition)...

whether this image is from the author's 'collection' or is a *doctored* image designed by the publishers (with or without said author's knowledge), it should give one pause to consider: as entertaining and factual as the contents of this volume *might* be, if the powers-that-be cannot even provide a legitimate image for the front cover of a supposed 'history' of teratology, then JUST how legitimate is the information (and 'rare' photos) contained within???

...in other words: buyer beware(!).

the studio manderley

minneapolis, minnesota