American Sideshow by Marc Hartzman Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of American Sideshow
Book Review: Great Read
Summary: 5 Stars
I purchased this book as my son is interested in the Elephant man and similiar stories. When it arrived I sat and read it myself for a few hours. It is absorbing, full of pictures, and each person is given a short biography of their life and what they accomplished, suffered, and how they eventually died. The author does not view the persons as freaks, but as unfortunate victims of nature. RecommendedBook Review: Interesting Subject, Wooden Prose
Summary: 2 Stars
When one reads the thumbnail (few are any more detailed than this) biographies of several fat ladies, a pall of sameness settles over it all. Part of it comes from the subject: fat ladies tend to have very similar situations and experiences, as do dwarves, giants, conjoined twins, etc., and to read of several is inevitably to read pretty much the same story.
This author enhances that experience by writing them mostly in the same words, very often cliched ones at that. His attempts at humor are pretty much at the level of nudge, nudge, wink, wink: if there is any sense of wonder here, it seems to hover around the sex lives of the subjects.
Yes, he is sympathetic to these folks, and few thoughtful people could really argue with the proposition "what else are they going to do for a living?" (I was blown away by the earnings he reports--$100 a week back in the day when $1 could buy 10 pounds of hamburger! It was often a very good living indeed.) Sadly, the sideshow has become passe, and with it a way of life that gave strange people a community--obviously often a rich and supportive one.
More American Sideshow reviews:
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