I should say that I am not a Trump basher or Trump hater, I just thought that his election to the office was as improbable as a well-known huckster such as PT Barnum doing so. exactly as he created himself.I had been equating Trump's electoral success in 2016 to PT Barnum ascending to the presidency in his own time, not only because PT Barnum is known as one of America's greatest showmen of all time, and the most successful purveyor of bunkum this country has ever seen, but especially because he improbably has had an official United States coin issued in tribute to him (commemorative fifty cent piece), which I feel quite certain is an honor that is now unlikely to fall to Mr. Above all, it ensures that Barnum would be properly remembered.
Brazen, confessional, and immensely entertaining, it immortalizes the showman who hoodwinked customers into paying to hear the reminiscences of a woman presented as George Washington's 161-year-old nurse, the impresario who brought Jenny Lind to America and toured Europe with General Tom Thumb, and the grand entrepreneur of the American Museum of New York. The present volume is the first modern edition of Barnum's original and outrageous autobiography, published in 1855 and unavailable for more than a century.
Barnum appeared regularly, allowing Barnum to keep up with demand and prune the narrative of details that might offend posterity. While running his numerous shows and exhibitions, Barnum managed to publish newspaper articles, exposés of fraud (not his own), self-help tracts, and a series of best-selling autobiographies, each promising to give "the true history of my many adventures." Over the course of a life that spanned the nineteenth century (1810-91), he inflicted himself upon a surprisingly willing public in a variety of guises, from newspaper editor (or libeler) to traveling showman (or charlatan) and distinguished public benefactor (or shameless hypocrite).īarnum deliberately cultivated his ambiguous public image through a lifelong advertising campaign, shrewdly exploiting the cultural and technological capabilities of the new publishing industry. Barnum embodied all that was grand and fraudulent in American mass culture.
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