HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. Meet the greatest entertainer of the 19th Century... In 1834, desperate to create a better life for his family, small-time Connecticut businessman P. T. Barnum moved to New York City. With true entrepreneurial spirit and against all odds, he wowed audiences with his ensemble of musical spectacles, attractions and variety shows - often exploiting the vulnerable...

A biography of W.C. Coup, a nineteenth-century circus owner famous for creating an underwater version of a circus.

"The first major biography of P.T. Barnum in a generation, a vivid account of the forefather of American entertainment. P. T. Barnum was the greatest showman the world has ever seen: the cocreator of the Barnum & Bailey Circus and the man who made worldwide sensations of Jumbo the Elephant, General Tom Thumb, and the "Swedish Nightingale," Jenny Lind. He was the champion of wonder, joy, trickery, and "humbug." He was, as Barnum argues, one of the...

A biography of the showman who created a three-ring circus known as "the greatest show on earth" and sponsored such notables as Tom Thumb, Jenny Lind, and Jumbo, the elephant.

"Explores the life of showman P. T. Barnum, including his start as an entrepreneur, creating the American Museum, building and losing his fortune, and introducing the three-ring circus to America"--Provided by publisher.

Describes how a circus elephant named Topsy was electrocuted in 1903 with 6,600 volts of alternating current as proof that it was much more dangerous than direct current in an ongoing dispute between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse. At the turn of the century, the circus in America was at its apex with the circuses of P.T. Barnum and Adam Forepaugh competing in a War of the Elephants, with declarations of whose pachyderms were younger, bigger,...