Download or read book The Colossal P T Barnum Reader written by Phineas Taylor Barnum and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Colossal P. T. Barnum Reader reveals the trailblazing American showman as, by turns, a moral reformer, a habitual hoaxer, an insightful critic, a savvy "puffer," a master of images, a sparkling writer, a relentless provocateur, and an early advocate of "family" entertainments. Taken together, these selections paint a new and more complete portrait of this complex man than has ever been seen before. James W. Cook's The Colossal P. T. Barnum Reader includes large excerpts from Barnum's semi-autobiographical novel The Adventures of an Adventurer (1841), his European letters from 1844-46 informing readers of the New York Atlas of his reception by royalty overseas, selections from his Ancient and Modern Humbugs of the World (Barnum's 1864-65 insider's look into nineteenth-century frauds), and much, much more. The book also features vintage photographs and reproductions of difficult-to-find images from Barnum's two-decade collaboration with the prominent New York lithographers Currier and Ives. Collectively, these materials help us to track the shifting personas of the great showman, his promotional choices, and his publics across the nineteenth century. Book jacket.
Download or read book A Colossal Hoax written by Scott Tribble and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2008-12-16 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In October 1869, as America stood on the brink of becoming a thoroughly modern nation, workers unearthed what appeared to be a petrified ten-foot giant on a remote farm in upstate New York. The discovery caused a sensation. Over the next several months, newspapers devoted daily headlines to the story and tens of thousands of Americans—including Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the great showman P. T. Barnum—flocked to see the giant on exhibition. In the colossus, many saw evidence that their continent, and the tiny hamlet of Cardiff, had ties to Biblical history. American science also weighed in on the discovery, and in doing so revealed its own growing pains, including the shortcomings of traditional education, the weaknesses of archaeological methodology, as well as the vexing presence of amateurs and charlatans within its ranks. A national debate ensued over the giant's origins, and was played out in the daily press. Ultimately, the discovery proved to be an elaborate hoax. Still, the story of the Cardiff Giant reveals many things about America in the post-Civil War years. After four years of destruction on an unimagined scale, Americans had increasingly turned their attention to the renewal of progress. But the story of the Cardiff Giant seemed to shed light on a complicated, mysterious past, and for a time scientists, clergymen, newspaper editors, and ordinary Americans struggled to make sense of it. Hucksters, of course, did their best to take advantage of it. The Cardiff Giant was one of the leading questions of the day, and how citizens answered it said much about Americans in 1869 as well as about America more generally.
Download or read book Adman s Dilemma written by Paul Rutherford and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Adman's Dilemma is a cultural biography that explores the rise and fall of the advertising man as a figure who became effectively a licensed deceiver in the process of governing the lives of American consumers. Apparently this personage was caught up in a contradiction, both compelled to deceive yet supposed to tell the truth. It was this moral condition and its consequences that made the adman so interesting to critics, novelists, and eventually filmmakers. The biography tracks his saga from its origins in the exaggerated doings of P.T. Barnum, the emergence of a new profession in the 1920s, the heyday of the adman's influence during the post-WW2 era, the later rebranding of the adman as artist, until the apparent demise of the figure, symbolized by the triumph of that consummate huckster, Donald Trump. In The Adman's Dilemma, author Paul Rutherford explores how people inside and outside the advertising industry have understood the conflict between artifice and authenticity. The book employs a range of fictional and nonfictional sources, including memoirs, novels, movies, TV shows, websites, and museum exhibits to suggest how the adman embodied some of the strange realities of modernity.
Download or read book The Humbugs of the World written by Phineas Taylor Barnum and published by . This book was released on 1866 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book American Fun written by John Beckman and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014-02-04 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here is an animated and wonderfully engaging work of cultural history that lays out America’s unruly past by describing the ways in which cutting loose has always been, and still is, an essential part of what it means to be an American. From the time the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, Americans have defied their stodgy rules and hierarchies with pranks, dances, stunts, and wild parties, shaping the national character in profound and lasting ways. In the nation’s earlier eras, revelers flouted Puritans, Patriots pranked Redcoats, slaves lampooned masters, and forty-niners bucked the saddles of an increasingly uptight middle class. In the twentieth century, fun-loving Americans celebrated this heritage and pushed it even further: flappers “barney-mugged” in “petting pantries,” Yippies showered the New York Stock Exchange with dollar bills, and B-boys invented hip-hop in a war zone in the Bronx. This is the surprising and revelatory history that John Beckman recounts in American Fun. Tying together captivating stories of Americans’ “pursuit of happiness”—and distinguishing between real, risky fun and the bland amusements that paved the way for Hollywood, Disneyland, and Xbox—Beckman redefines American culture with a delightful and provocative thesis. (With black-and-white illustrations throughout.)
Download or read book Politics and Beauty in America written by Timothy J. Lukes and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-06-28 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book holds classical liberalism responsible for an American concept of beauty that centers upon women, wilderness, and machines. For each of the three beauty components, a cultural entrepreneur supremely sensitive to liberalism’s survival agenda is introduced. P.T. Barnum’s exhibition of Jenny Lind is a masterful combination of female elegance and female potency in the subsistence realm. John Muir’s Yosemite Valley is surely exquisite, but only after a rigorous liberal education prepares for its experience. And Harley Earl’s 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air is a dreamy expressionist sculpture, but with a practical 265 cubic inch V-8 underneath. Not that American beauty has been uniformly pragmatic. The 1950s are reconsidered for having temporarily facilitated a relaxation of the liberal survival priorities, and the creations of painter Jackson Pollock and jazz virtuoso Ornette Coleman are evaluated for their resistance to the pressures of pragmatism. The author concludes with a provocative speculation regarding a future liberal habitat where Emerson’s admonition to attach stars to wagons is rescinded.
Download or read book The Invention of Race written by Nicolas Bancel and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-04-24 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited collection explores the genesis of scientific conceptions of race and their accompanying impact on the taxonomy of human collections internationally as evidenced in ethnographic museums, world fairs, zoological gardens, international colonial exhibitions and ethnic shows. A deep epistemological change took place in Europe in this domain toward the end of the eighteenth century, producing new scientific representations of race and thereby triggering a radical transformation in the visual economy relating to race and racial representation and its inscription in the body. These practices would play defining roles in shaping public consciousness and the representation of “otherness” in modern societies. The Invention of Race provides contextualization that is often lacking in contemporary discussions on diversity, multiculturalism and race.
Download or read book The Civil War Era and Reconstruction written by Mary Ellen Snodgrass and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-03-26 with total page 1911 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The encyclopedia takes a broad, multidisciplinary approach to the history of the period. It includes general and specific entries on politics and business, labor, industry, agriculture, education and youth, law and legislative affairs, literature, music, the performing and visual arts, health and medicine, science and technology, exploration, life on the Western frontier, family life, slave life, Native American life, women, and more than a hundred influential individuals.
Download or read book Pranksters written by Kembrew McLeod and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Benjamin Franklin's newspaper hoax that faked the death of his rival to Abbie Hoffman’s attempt to levitate the Pentagon, pranksters, hoaxers, and con artists have caused confusion, disorder, and laughter in Western society for centuries. Profiling the most notorious mischief makers from the 1600s to the present day, Pranksters explores how “pranks” are part of a long tradition of speaking truth to power and social critique. Invoking such historical and contemporary figures as P.T. Barnum, Jonathan Swift, WITCH, The Yes Men, and Stephen Colbert, Kembrew McLeod shows how staged spectacles that balance the serious and humorous can spark important public conversations. In some instances, tricksters have incited social change (and unfortunate prank blowback) by manipulating various forms of media, from newspapers to YouTube. For example, in the 1960s, self-proclaimed “professional hoaxer” Alan Abel lampooned America’s hypocritical sexual mores by using conservative rhetoric to fool the news media into covering a satirical organization that advocated clothing naked animals. In the 1990s, Sub Pop Records then-receptionist Megan Jasper satirized the commodification of alternative music culture by pranking the New York Times into reporting on her fake lexicon of “grunge speak.” Throughout this book, McLeod shows how pranks interrupt the daily flow of approved information and news, using humor to underscore larger, pointed truths. Written in an accessible, story-driven style, Pranksters reveals how mischief makers have left their shocking, entertaining, and educational mark on modern political and social life.
Download or read book Networking Argument written by Carol Winkler and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-11 with total page 605 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume presents selected works from the 20th Biennial Alta Argumentation Conference, sponsored by the National Communication Association and the American Forensics Association and held in 2017. The conference brought together scholars from Europe, Asia, and North America to engage in intensive conversations about how argument functions in our increasingly networked society. The essays discuss four aspects of networked argument. Some examine arguments occurring in online networks, seeking to both understand and respond more effectively to the acute changes underway in the information age. Others focus on offline networks to identify historical and contemporary resources available to advocates in the modern day. Still others discuss the value-added of including argumentation scholars on interdisciplinary research teams analyzing a diverse range of subjects, including science, education, health, law, economics, history, security, and media. Finally, the remainder network argumentation theories explore how the interactions between and among existing theories offer fruitful ground for new insights for the field of argumentation studies. The wide range of disciplinary backgrounds and methodological approaches employed in Networking Argument make this volume a unique compilation of perspectives for understanding urgent and sustaining issues facing our society.
Download or read book Edgar Allan Poe and His Nineteenth Century American Counterparts written by John Cullen Gruesser and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-01-24 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2019 Patrick F. Quinn Award for the best book on Poe (awarded by the Poe Studies Association) Edgar Allan Poe and His Nineteenth-Century American Counterparts addresses Poe's connections with, critical assessments of, borrowings from, and effect on his literary peers. It situates Poe within his own time and place, paying particular attention to his interactions with, and impact on, figures such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Harriet Jacobs, and Pauline Hopkins. John Cullen Gruesser rebuts myths that continue to cling to Poe, demonstrates Poe's ability to transform themes he encountered in the works of his literary contemporaries into great literature, and establishes the profound influence of Poe's invention of detective fiction on nineteenth-century American writers.
Download or read book The Unseen Truth written by Sarah Lewis and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2024-09-17 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sarah Lewis unearths the critical moment when Americans were confronted with the fictions shoring up the nation's racial regime and learned to disregard them. When popular nineteenth-century images of the Caucasus proved the lie of white supremacy, a new visual regime arose to suppress the evidence of the incoherence of racial order.
Download or read book A Companion to American Cultural History written by Karen Halttunen and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-01-28 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Companion to American Cultural History offers a historiographic overview of the scholarship, with special attention to the major studies and debates that have shaped the field, and an assessment of where it is currently headed. 30 essays explore the history of American culture at all analytic levels Written by scholarly experts well-versed in the questions and controversies that have activated interest in this burgeoning field Part of the authoritative Blackwell Companions to American History series Provides both a chronological and thematic approach: topics range from British America in the Eighteenth Century to the modern day globalization of American Culture; thematic approaches include gender and sexuality and popular culture
Download or read book Pioneers of Promotion written by Joe Dobrow and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2018-06-14 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The average American today is bombarded with as many as 5,000 advertisements a day. The sophisticated and persuasive marketing tactics that companies use may seem a recent phenomenon, but Pioneers of Promotion tells a different story. In this lively narrative, business history writer Joe Dobrow traces the origins of modern American marketing to the late nineteenth century when three charismatic individuals launched an industry that defines our national culture. Transporting readers back to a dramatic time in the late 1800s, Dobrow spotlights a trio of men who reshaped our image of the West and earned national fame: John M. Burke of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, Tody Hamilton of the Barnum & Bailey Circus, and Moses P. Handy of the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Drawing on scores of original source materials, Dobrow brings to light the surprisingly sophisticated techniques of these Gilded Age press agents. Using mostly newspapers—plus a good deal of moxie, emotional suasion, iconic imagery, and to be sure, alcohol—Burke, Hamilton, and Handy each devised ways to promote celebrities, attract huge crowds, and generate massive news coverage. As a result, a plainsman named William F. Cody became more famous than the president of the United States, a traveling circus turned into the Greatest Show on Earth, and a world’s fair attracted more than 27 million visitors. Tapping his practitioner’s knowledge of marketing and promotion, Dobrow reintroduces readers to Buffalo Bill and his Wild West show, P. T. Barnum and his circus, and the greatest of all world’s fairs. Surprisingly, the promotional geniuses who engineered these enterprises do not appear in history books alongside other marketing and advertising legends such as Ivy Lee, Edward Bernays, or David Ogilvy. Pioneers of Promotion at long last gives these founders of American marketing their due.
Download or read book The Rise of the American Circus 1716 1899 written by S.L. Kotar and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2011-10-10 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To both young and old, the circus remains an icon of American entertainment, a wholesome pastime untouched by the passing years. But the modern circus, with its three rings, ringmaster, animals, and acrobats, is the product of nearly three hundred years of evolution. This intriguing work chronicles the history of the American circus from its roots in England through its importation to America to the end of the nineteenth century. It introduces the early pioneers of the circus, addresses business concerns such as management and training, and discusses the development of the show itself, including the incorporation of menageries, the need for animal training and care, the addition of circus music, the use of the tent, and the unique attractions of side shows and "freaks." Personal stories of those who made their lives under the "big top" are woven throughout the narrative, adding an intimate perspective to one of America's most enduring entertainments.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of American Literature written by Manly, Inc. and published by Infobase Learning. This book was released on 2013-06 with total page 4512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Susan Clair Imbarrato, Carol Berkin, Brett Barney, Lisa Paddock, Matthew J. Bruccoli, George Parker Anderson, Judith S.
Download or read book Beatlemania written by André Millard and published by Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM. This book was released on 2012-06-04 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This look at how changes in the music industry made the Fab Four phenomenon possible “presents a different interpretation of a much-studied topic” (Essays in Economic and Business History). In this unique study, André Millard argues that, despite the Beatles’ indisputable skill, they would not have attained the same global recognition or been as influential without the convergence of significant developments in the way music was produced, recorded, sold, and consumed. As the Second Industrial Revolution hit full swing and baby boomers came of age, the reel-to-reel recorder and other technological advances sped the evolution of the music business. Musicians, recording studios and record labels, and music fans used and interacted with music-making and -playing technology in new ways. Higher quality machines made listening to records and the radio an experience that one could easily share with others, even if they weren’t in the same physical space. At the same time, an increase in cross-Atlantic commerce—especially of entertainment products—led to a freer exchange of ideas and styles of expression, notably among the middle and lower classes in the U.S. and the UK. At that point, Millard argues, the Beatles rode their remarkable musicianship and cultural savvy to an unprecedented bond with their fans—and spawned Beatlemania. Lively and insightful, Beatlemania offers a deeper understanding the days of the Fab Four and the band’s long-term effects on the business and culture of pop music.
