P.T. Barnum’s Big Picture Book of Humbugs of the World (Illustrated) - Volume One

“When entertaining the public, it is best to have an elephant.”
- P.T. Barnum

The ultimate showman and master of the humbug, Phineas Taylor Barnum has collected in this volume a clown car stuffed with delightful anecdotes, yarns, and tales about the greatest humbugs and hoaxes ever perpetrated. Here you will meet impostors, charlatans, and deceptors - all pulling off a scam of one sort or another. Sometimes they’re driven by greed, other times by the sport of pulling it off. This book offers a parade of history’s con men and conjurers, religious nuts and swindlers, complete with Barnum’s insightful commentary. The editors have lavishly illustrated this brand-new, oversized edition.

P.T. Barnum is a celebrated American impresario known for his make-you-blink hoaxes (Feejee Mermaid, the Cardiff Giant, et al.) and for founding the Barnum & Bailey Circus. He said of himself: “I am a showman by profession ... and all the gilding shall make nothing else of me”
Barnum’s first venture into the entertainment world was Barnum's Grand Scientific and Musical Theater, followed by the purchase of the American Museum (to which he attached his name). Later on he established a traveling circus known as P.T. Barnum’s Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan & Hippodrome. Today, the enterprise is called Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus … “The Greatest Show on Earth.”