The Spectacular P. T. Barnum

There’s no getting your arms around P. T. Barnum, no safe space in the cultural imagination for this guy. With his jolly bulb of a nose and his limitless energy—that demonic, write-two-lectures-before-breakfast 19th-century energy, historically entitled and unimpeded by neurosis—the great showman grows trickier and more tricksterish with every passing year.

He was a great galumphing racist. He was an unscrupling exploiter of children, animals, and the disabled. He was a caterer to base appetites; his medium was the mob, its whims and its fevers. He was a scammer. Do you sense the approach of a …? There is no . Barnum was Barnum, not to be apologized for. Rather there is a series of s … And he became a devout abolitionist. And he was a generous man