Am I really sitting here, taking the time to write out a review for P.T. Barnum's autobiography?Why yes, yes I am.Now, P.T. Barnum was not a good man. We all know this, and if you let Hugh Jackman's portrayal of Barnum in "The Greatest Showman" take over your idea of what real Barnum was like, well, that's your own damn problem. That being said, I do love The Greatest Showman - can we say, favorite movie? - and, as I said above, it's your own fault if you can't do research for yourself. After wa...

There is a movie that just came out about this guy named P.T. Barnum. Apparently it’s some sort of musical starring The Wolverine, but I'm told that Professor X and the rest of the gang couldn't make it for some reason. I thought maybe that I'd probably like it still, but alas, he never once brandishes his adamantium claws! Anyway, I think my wife is going to drag me out to see it, so I thought I'd brush up on the real history of the guy so I can annoy my wife by half-seriously pointing out all

This one is a ride. A colorful guy gives an account of his work and life adventures that's 1/3 practical jokes, 1/3 savvy business advice, and 1/3 pure amusement. Barnum is an impresario who brought entertainment to the world en route to getting rich. Written in 1855, it comes with the time's formality and interesting language, which can make it slightly tedious here and there, but still well worth it. Interesting to visit a time when social media didn't desensitize people to the world's curiosi...

This is an absolutely charming book. A good chunk at the beginning is dedicated to describing practical jokes throughout Barnum's family history as a lead-in to his career as a showman. I often found myself chuckling at his phrasing, which I believe is more than a product of the time at which he was writing. If you are looking for an objective history/biography, Barnum's autobiography is certainly no source of hard facts, but the spin he puts on his stories is an interesting piece of the truth,

I was given this book as a gift after watching The Greatest Showman about a dozen times. It’s always interesting to me when a movie is based on a real person or event to see how close the depiction is to the real thing. Parts of this book were interesting and funny and parts were dry and dull. The old fashioned language and typography were tricky to decipher as well.

Started reading this after seeing Hugh Jackman sing a song that is going to be in a new musical about Barnum.His tale is an interesting one, and one only he himself could tell.At times the pace was slow but they were overshadowed by laugh out loud stories. This book is a lot of little stories about his life.

Really interesting stories that Barnum witnessed and experienced. Some descriptions of life in the mid 1830s-1850s made me scramble for a Google search while other things seemed oddly the same. Maybe it was me but I feel so enlightened as to what “humbug” means now (and it isn’t just something Scrooge said to Christmas revelers). I liked Barnum’s rules for success at the end and I live that he loved his wife and daughters. Also, the parts about General Tom Thumb and Jenny Lind were really intere...

The ancestor of all social media influencers! Eye-opening to read, how much we think things have changed, but how little they really have.

This was not my usual reading fare, but I was intrigued, as my vague knowledge of this man was that he coined famous phrases such as 'There's one born every minute'. However he does not allude to that in his autobiography, but his career perhaps demonstrates it.As an autobiography it is rather bitty and rambling and the beginning consists mostly of accounts of practical jokes the males of the community where he grew up played on each other - women were mostly excluded it seems. But Barnum's gran...

P.T. Barnum, America’s most famous marketeer. The first part of the story is most about practical jokes and scams his grandfather and uncles ran. Eventually, he describes some of his own scams. Not very nice was this guy. He was always looking for the fast buck at anyone’s expense but his own. Barnum’s America is a place of gags and deceptions. Always beware of every situation because it likely is there to humiliate you. Trust no one, especially your friends. These gags were entertainment for pe...

Fantastic. A bit slow to start off with but such an interesting read when I finally had time to read!

Absolutely hated this. Not only was Barnum a conman, a racist* and an all-round deplorable human being, he's also beyond arrogant and writes in a way that comes across as big-headed and generally superfluous. Not worth the time it takes to decipher.*I don't give a hoot for time or context tbh, so don't try to play that card, racism's racism.

My edition of Barnum's autobiography has, on its cover, a faceless ringmaster genuflecting towards a crowd while, behind him, an elephant does a trick on a pedestal. This cover was presumably chosen to attract fans of The Greatest Showman musical. It's a hoodwink worthy of the man himself: Barnum published his autobiography in 1855, some 15 years before he entered the ring in earnest. Anyone looking for an account of The Greatest Show on Earth should look elsewhere. Though Barnum does dedicate a...

“The book will be very widely read, and will do infinite mischief.” This was the conclusion of a contemporary newspaper and a sentiment widely echoed by the scandalized readers of Barnum’s unapologetic autobiography. After seeing Hugh Jackman cartwheel and drink his way through The Greatest Showman, I decided that it was finally time to take the “mischievous” thing down from the shelf, brush ten years' worth of dust off it, and meet the man behind the musical. Given his famous talents for self-p...

A quick read (surprisingly). As someone who loves the Cy Coleman musical (1980) and dislikes The Greatest Showman, I read this with a mixed view. It’s surprisingly funny to begin with, learning of his family and the many practical jokes. You then discover his various exploits, lots of details about how much money he earned, and strikingly some real examples of how much of a horrible person Barnum was. It’s very much of its time and I’m a firm believer you shouldn’t remove things from history as

Written in 1850s, you have to be ready for different sentence structures, terminology, and idioms that were current then. The life of PT Barnum is fantastical - he was a great promoter and showman. The term "humbug" was used to describe his many practical jokes and "pulling the wool over everyone's eyes" ... I enjoyed the Jenny Lind episodes. A true American success story!

I picked up this book after I saw the movie The Greatest Show. So, I really didn't know what to expect. In reading up about P.T. Barnum and this particular book, the secular press panned the book, as well as looking askance at Barnum's life and his business practices. However, once I read the book, I really liked P.T Barnum and the way he did business. He never lied to anyone, and in fact, went farther than most would have in telling the audience what was really happening. An interesting book, a...

After seeing the movie "The Greatest Showman" I was fascinated to find out more about P.T. Barnum. In my opinion, this authobiography was terrible. The pages I read were all about his growing up and telling jokes and more stories about people in his family. I was looking for information on P. T. himself. This book was not for me and I couldn't begin to finish it.

It took me a long time to read this book. Started it after I saw the movie and found out the movie was greatly exaggerated. This was written by P.T. Barnum himself and while he did live an interesting life, the book was bogged down in too much detail. The book is all about his sideshow days. No mention of a circus.

borrowed this one after seeing "the greatest showman." lots of funny anecdotes, especially in his early life. my major issue with the book was the printing... i'm getting old, i know, but this print was dinky, uneven--almost splotchy--and headache inducing. i was also a little disappointed at how much of the movie was fictionalized. but whatevs, both were enjoyable.