Freak show : presenting human oddities for amusement and profit / Robert Bogdan.
Bogdan, Robert.
1988
GV1835 .B64 1988
Available at Special Collections

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Title Freak show : presenting human oddities for amusement and profit / Robert Bogdan.
Author Bogdan, Robert.
ISBN 0226063119
9780226063119
0226063127
9780226063126
Imprint Chicago : University of Chicago Press, ©1988.
Language English
Description xiii, 322 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Call Number GV1835 .B64 1988
Dewey Decimal Classification 791/.1
Summary From 1840 until 1940, freak shows by the hundreds crisscrossed the United States. The freak show was widely accepted as one of America's most popular forms of entertainment. Robert Bogdan's fascinating social history brings to life the world of the freak show and explores the culture that nurtured and, later, abandoned it. In uncovering this neglected chapter of show business, he describes in detail the flimflam artistry behind the shows, the promoters and the audiences, and the gradual evolution of public opinion from awe to embarrassment. Freaks were not born, Bogdan reveals; they were manufactured by the amusement world, usually with the active participation of the freaks themselves. Many of the "human curiosities" found fame and fortune, becoming the celebrities of their time, until the ascent of professional medicine transformed them from marvels into pathological specimens. -- From publisher's description
Bibliography, etc. Note Includes bibliographical references (pages 301-314) and index.
Record Appears in On-Campus Resources > Books
All Resources
Introduction: In search of freaks
From tavern to Madison Square Garden: a chronicle of the freak show in America
Step right up: the world of popular amusement
Exotic and aggrandized: modes of presenting freaks
The exhibition of people we now call mentally retarded
Illusions of grandeur
Cannibals and savages
Respectable freaks
Self-made freaks
Conclusion: Freak encounter.

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