Although he called himself, "the Prince of Humbug," American showman Phineas Taylor Barnum was more accurately the "Emperor of Deception."
Barnum's life and deeds are chronicled in "P.T. Barnum, America's Greatest Showman," by Philip B. Kunhardt Jr., Philip B. Kunhardt III and Peter W. Kunhardt.Barnum introduced to the American public Joice Heth, purportedly 167 years old and former nurse to George Washington. And he perpetrated plenty of other hoaxes.
Among them was the Fejee Mermaid, "an ingenious sewing together of large fish's body and tail with the head, shoulders, arms and rather pendulous breasts of a female orangutan and the head of a baboon."
And even though he has been inaccurately credited with authoring the phrase "There's a sucker born every minute," there has probably never been anyone who more deserved to be remembered by that motto.
It is difficult to imagine today's culture without Barnum and his ingenious ways of publicizing his deeds. Thanks, in part, to him, there are Christmas sales in August; critical praise for still-to-be seen books, films and TV shows; and plenty of "new and improved" products.
The Kunhardts have done a splendid job of re-creating the life of this man who was a forerunner of everything that smacks of media hype and a relentless exhibitor of people who were emotionally or physically challenged.