Reviews of Barnum: An American Life
“Robert Wilson’s Barnum, the first full-dress biography in 20 years, eschews cliches for a more nuanced story ... Mr. Wilson’s book shows how one complicated, contradictory, morally ambiguous man struggled to improve himself while being single-mindedly determined to given delight to millions. It is a life for our times, and the biography Barnum deserves.”
—Rachel Shteir, The Wall Street Journal
“Better than anyone who’d come before, the Prince of Humbugs understood that the public was willing—even eager—to be conned, provided there was enough entertainment to be Had in the process. That theory of Barnum’s genius makes Wilson’s book peculiarly relevant ...”
—Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker
“In this immensely readable biography, Robert Wilson has given us insights into the most admirable and questionable aspects of a deeply complicated man.”
—Paul Markowitz, The National Book Review
“The show must go on! Robert Wilson's rip-roaring biography of the circus entrepreneur P. T. Barnum is the stuff of dreams—the American dream of optimism, hard work, success, failure, and finding the strength to turn it all around. A bravura work.”
--Amanda Foreman, author of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire and A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War
—Rachel Shteir, The Wall Street Journal
“Better than anyone who’d come before, the Prince of Humbugs understood that the public was willing—even eager—to be conned, provided there was enough entertainment to be Had in the process. That theory of Barnum’s genius makes Wilson’s book peculiarly relevant ...”
—Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker
“In this immensely readable biography, Robert Wilson has given us insights into the most admirable and questionable aspects of a deeply complicated man.”
—Paul Markowitz, The National Book Review
“The show must go on! Robert Wilson's rip-roaring biography of the circus entrepreneur P. T. Barnum is the stuff of dreams—the American dream of optimism, hard work, success, failure, and finding the strength to turn it all around. A bravura work.”
--Amanda Foreman, author of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire and A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War
“Robert Wilson's Barnum is portrait in the round: Phineas T. Barnum as impresario, myth-maker, salesman, huckster, temperance advocate,
politician, bankrupt, millionaire—and purveyor of the exotic, the curious, and the lucrative. Scraping away the legend from the man with consummate skill, Wilson clearly delivers the best and worst of Barnum, which is the best and worst of America: self-invented, brash, infamous and joyously alive.”
--Brenda Wineapple, author of The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation
politician, bankrupt, millionaire—and purveyor of the exotic, the curious, and the lucrative. Scraping away the legend from the man with consummate skill, Wilson clearly delivers the best and worst of Barnum, which is the best and worst of America: self-invented, brash, infamous and joyously alive.”
--Brenda Wineapple, author of The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation
“An admirable, well-written, eminently readable biography of the great showman. Robert Wilson’s research is prodigious, his writing deliciously sly. This is an estimable work.”
--A. H. Saxon, author of P. T. Barnum, The Legend and the Man
--A. H. Saxon, author of P. T. Barnum, The Legend and the Man
“Robert Wilson's lean and forceful Barnum adds a fourth ring to the great circus of its subject's life: an appreciation of Barnum's self-awareness, public-spiritedness and efforts toward moral improvement amidst all the outrageous hustle and humbug of his spectacular career as a showman. Barnum is a witty, level-headed model of how to view a historical figure by continually rotating the lens of the present and the lens of the past. The book is a rare combination of shrewdness and warmth.”
--Thomas Mallon, author of Landfall and Henry and Clara
--Thomas Mallon, author of Landfall and Henry and Clara
“It turns out that one of our great editors is also a masterly writer, able to pull off the biographer's most impressive trick—making the reader care, deeply, about a figure she hadn’t known she needed to know. And Phineas Taylor Barnum is a riot, at once a charlatan and a genius, and, as Wilson shows, an indispensable force in the creation of our modern world.”
--Thomas Chatterton Williams, contributing writer, The New York Times Magazine
--Thomas Chatterton Williams, contributing writer, The New York Times Magazine
“Anyone seeking to reconcile the moronic with the magnificent in American culture would do well to start with Robert Wilson’s Barnum. It is a fascinating, accomplished biography of a brilliant and shameless impresario who in the same lifetime sold tickets to viewings of a mermaid fashioned out of a monkey top and a fish bottom, and the historic spectacle ‘Nero, or the Destruction of Rome’ with a 1,200-member cast, an orchestra, a choir, and a massive menagerie on a half-mile stage. This story has it all: entrepreneurial genius, boundless optimism, personal tragedy, professional ruin, and a suicidal white elephant. The shows are the greatest on earth and somehow everything is always quite literally on fire. Perhaps without intending to, Wilson has held up a nineteenth-century mirror to the relentless berserk of our own time.”
--Kenneth Whyte, author of Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times and
The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst
--Kenneth Whyte, author of Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times and
The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst
“From a ‘mermaid’ to Tom Thumb to the Greatest Show on Earth, P.T. Barnum believed that the public ‘preferred their realities sweetened with some imaginatively presented foolery.’ And in this impressive biography, Robert Wilson gives readers the real Phineas Taylor Barnum, sweetening this already entertaining book with brilliantly presented facts that far surpass anything previously imagined about his colorful, controversial subject.”
--Jeff Guinn, author of Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson and
The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Trip
--Jeff Guinn, author of Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson and
The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Trip