A profile of entrepreneurial showman Phineas T. Barnum details his personal life, ambitious rise from poverty, and spectacular show business and circus career. By the author of Quest for a King.
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Editorial Reviews
From School Library Journal
Grade 6-9-A lively, informative biography of the great 19th-century showman who dubbed himself the Prince of Humbugs. Most readers will associate his name with the Barnum and Bailey Circus, but that venture was preceded by a long life of selling and promoting. Barnum started museums, brought Jenny Lind to America, exhibited Tom Thumb and other incredible human curiosities, and showcased Jumbo the elephant. Andronik tells readers all about this quintessential salesman's life, his successes, and also the tragedies that slowed but never stopped him. Even if your collection already includes Alice Fleming's P.T. Barnum (Walker, 1993) or Ann Tompert's P.T. Barnum (Dillon, 1988), consider this title for the author's engaging, conversational style and her use of numerous quotations from Barnum's autobiography (documented in endnotes). Good-quality, black-and-white reproductions of period illustrations and photographs appear throughout.
Carolyn Angus, The Claremont Graduate School, CA
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Carolyn Angus, The Claremont Graduate School, CA
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Gr. 6-9. Barnum may not have really said, "There's a sucker born every minute," but he certainly was a brash showman who delighted in manipulating the media and creating superstars, updated his autobiography regularly, and weathered financial ruin, not once but many times. Andronik relied heavily on Barnum's memoirs to write this biography of the Yankee impresario, and her enthusiasm for her subject is evident in her lively account of his enterprises and escapades. Chapter source notes and an extensive bibliography that includes both adult and YA books will provide considerable help to student researchers. Black-and-white photographs and prints are scattered throughout the text. Chris Sherman
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5.0 out of 5 stars
A fool a minute,
This review is from: Prince of Humbugs: A Life of P. T. Barnum (Hardcover)
P.T. Barnum, the great showman, was also a great observer of the human condition, and he made many savvy observations thereof. "A fool is born every minute," he said.
He was also known to say, "A fool and his money are soon separated." As an agile showman, Barnum became expert at separating fools from their funds, just as one current presidential candidate seems to developed expertise at separating folks from their senses. Barnum wasn't in politics, of course, but he'd undoubtedly see great entertainment in modern politics, if he were still with us, and he'd undoubtedly profit substantially from the foolery. But in his own time, Barnum essentially invented entertainment for the common man, with museums of bizarre and unusual items, like the "Feejee Mermaid" presented at Scudder's American Museum in New York, which he opened in January 1842. The "mermaid" was ultimately exposed as a rather expensive Japanese fake purchased by a Boston seaman in 1817 in Calcutta. But Barnum had also caged all kinds of wild animals from which to pull revenue--including Beluga whales captured in 1851 Canada, after Herman Melville published Moby Dick. The Connecticut native also made a great career for a little man, Tom Stratton, whom he met when Tom was but five, but looked much younger. Of course, Tom very soon became General Tom Thumb, who married Miss Lavinia Warren Bump, and with his wife and Barnum's help had quite a successful showman's life until he died at the age of 45 in 1883. Barnum also presented the world with the Chang and Eng, the sons of a wealthy Chinese family that lived in Thailand, who were joined at the chest by a 5.5 inch armlike ligament---and gave the world the term "Siamese twins." Barnum brought them to England, where he hired surgeons to consult about separating the twins. Although it was impossible---as the twins shared a liver and bloodstream---both men married, lived fruitful lives in Barnum's shows, and fathered and raised 21 children between them. P.T., in short, mastered the art of presenting the impossible, occasionally fraudulent, as possible. Latter-day politicians and presidential candidates, unfortunately, have made an art of presenting the impossible as possible far more often than Barnum---with as much showmanship, and much more fakery. Like Barnum said, a fool is born every minute. And in this book, kids can find out how the greatest showman of all time profited thereby.
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