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Humbugs of the World
- Narrated by: Rick Adamson
- Length: 11 hrs and 19 mins
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1 out of 5 stars
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5 out of 5 stars
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3 out of 5 stars
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5 out of 5 stars
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5 out of 5 stars
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JOHNATHAN SWIFT AND POWER OF THE PEN
- By chetyarbrough.blog on 09-30-14
By: Leo Damrosch
Editorial reviews
P. T. Barnum was a force of a man who changed entertainment and how it was marketed to the public. Best known as the founder of Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus he’s also been attached with the moniker of con man, flimflam artist, and humbug. You won't find a shred of an apology here, however. He defines a humbug in the pejorative sense as someone who, through fraudulent claims, "abuses" the public, in contrast to the harmless sort, such as himself, who "amuses". Barnum, normally the entertainer, is here the politician and Rick Adams takes on the historic and worldly tone of his words in this audiobook describing humbugs from all walks of life encountered during the man’s illustrious life and work.
Publisher's summary
Here is P. T. Barnum's insightful review of humbugs, scams, deceits (and self-deceits) in culture, economics, entertainment, religion, medicine, and more.
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-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 65
Jonathan Swift is best remembered today as the author of Gulliver’s Travels, the satiric fantasy that quickly became a classic and has remained in print for nearly three centuries. Yet Swift also wrote many other influential works, was a major political and religious figure in his time, and became a national hero, beloved for his fierce protest against English exploitation of his native Ireland. What is really known today about the enigmatic man behind these accomplishments? Can the facts of his life be separated from the fictions?
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5 out of 5 stars
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JOHNATHAN SWIFT AND POWER OF THE PEN
- By chetyarbrough.blog on 09-30-14
By: Leo Damrosch
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The Sun and the Moon
- Hoaxers, Showmen, and Lunar Man-Bats in 19th-Century New York
- By: Matthew Goodman
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 70
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 39
The Sun and the Moon tells the delightful and surprisingly true story of how a series of articles in the Sun newspaper in 1835 convinced the citizens of New York that the moon was inhabited. Purporting to reveal discoveries of a famous British astronomer, the series described such moon life as unicorns, beavers that walked upright, and four-foot-tall flying man-bats. It quickly became the most widely circulated newspaper story of the era.
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3 out of 5 stars
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some very good some very bad
- By peter on 10-30-10
By: Matthew Goodman
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Plain Tales from the Hills
- By: Rudyard Kipling
- Narrated by: Martin Jarvis
- Length: 4 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 72
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Story4 out of 5 stars 40
An intimate, evocative, often funny, and always vital portrait of India at the peak of the British Raj. Written at the age of 22, they immediately show Kipling's natural and prodigious talent. Timeless, they can be listened to forever.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Gentle irony
- By Simon Bowler on 01-25-06
By: Rudyard Kipling
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Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
- By: Charles MacKay
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 27 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 111
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 98
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Story4 out of 5 stars 99
Why do otherwise intelligent individuals form seething masses of idiocy when they engage in collective action? We may think that the Great Crash of 1929, junk bonds of the '80s, and over-valued high-tech stocks of the '90s are peculiarly 20th century aberrations, but Mackay's classic - first published in 1841 - shows that the madness and confusion of crowds knows no limits, and has no temporal bounds.
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5 out of 5 stars
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People don't change
- By J. on 07-05-16
By: Charles MacKay
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Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Stories
- By: Edgar Allan Poe
- Narrated by: Earl Hammond
- Length: 1 hr and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 403
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 361
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Story4 out of 5 stars 362
A collection featuring three classic horror stories, read by actor Earl Hammond: "The Tell-Tale Heart", "The Cask of Amontillado", and "The Black Cat".
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent Narrator Brought The Story To Life
- By M.A. Wilson on 11-09-14
By: Edgar Allan Poe
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The Club
- Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age
- By: Leo Damrosch
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 358
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 299
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 294
In 1763, the painter Joshua Reynolds proposed to his friend Samuel Johnson that they invite a few friends to join them every Friday at the Turk's Head Tavern in London to dine, drink, and talk until midnight. Eventually, the group came to include among its members Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, and James Boswell. It was known simply as "the Club". In this captivating audiobook, Leo Damrosch brings alive a brilliant, competitive, and eccentric cast of characters.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful survey
- By Tad Davis on 05-10-19
By: Leo Damrosch
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The Confidence-Man
- His Masquerade
- By: Herman Melville
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 44
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Story4 out of 5 stars 38
Evoking Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, this is a story of interlocking tales from a group of steamboat passengers traveling down the Mississippi toward New Orleans. Aboard the Fidèle can be found all manner of con men, from those selling stock in failing companies and herbal cure-all "medicines" to those who are raising money for supposed charitable organizations and those who simply ask for money outright.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Trust and the confidence man
- By Nelson on 01-24-22
By: Herman Melville
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The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
- By: James Weldon Johnson
- Narrated by: Richard Allen
- Length: 6 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 71
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 63
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 63
Originally published anonymously in 1912, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man revealed as never before the color line dividing America, and the price it exacted on those souls who could traverse the two worlds. The book presents the fictional account of "an ex-colored man" - an African-American who could pass for white - as he attempts to choose which side of the line will better suit his life, and his psyche.
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5 out of 5 stars
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New favorite
- By Jess on 03-19-15
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Mark Twain
- A Life
- By: Ron Powers
- Narrated by: Ron Powers
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 120
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 77
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 76
Mark Twain founded the American voice. His works are a living national treasury: taught, quoted, and reprinted more than those of any writer except Shakespeare. His awestruck contemporaries saw him as the representative figure of his times, and his influence has deeply flavored the 20th and 21st centuries.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Buy the Book
- By W.Denis on 10-22-05
By: Ron Powers
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The Apparitionists
- A Tale of Phantoms, Fraud, Photography, and the Man Who Captured Lincoln's Ghost
- By: Peter Manseau
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Story4 out of 5 stars 34
In the early days of photography, in the death-strewn wake of the Civil War, one man seized America's imagination. A "spirit photographer", William Mumler took portrait photographs that featured the ghostly presence of a lost loved one alongside the living subject. Mumler was a sensation. Peter Manseau brilliantly captures a nation wracked with grief and hungry for proof of the existence of ghosts and for contact with their dead husbands and sons. It took a circus-like trial of Mumler on fraud charges to expose a fault line of doubt and manipulation.
By: Peter Manseau
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World’s End
- The Lanny Budd Novels, Book 1
- By: Upton Sinclair
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 26 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 81
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 73
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 73
Lanning “Lanny” Budd spends his first 13 years in Europe, living at the center of his mother’s glamourous circle of friends on the French Riviera. In 1913, he enters a prestigious Swiss boarding school and befriends Rick, an English boy, and Kurt, a German. The three schoolmates are privileged, happy, and precocious - but their world is about to come to an abrupt and violent end. When the gathering storm clouds of war finally burst, raining chaos and death over the continent, Lanny must put the innocence of youth behind him.
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3 out of 5 stars
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didn't finish
- By Bird Miller on 05-08-22
By: Upton Sinclair
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The Way of All Flesh
- By: Samuel Butler
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 15 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 175
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 111
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Story4 out of 5 stars 107
This brilliant satirical novel, tracing the life and loves of Ernest Pontifex, has continued in popularity since its original publication in 1903. Every generation finds in The Way of All Flesh a reaffirmation of youth's rightful struggle against the tyranny of harsh parents and its admirable will for freedom of personal expression.
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5 out of 5 stars
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classic satire- would make Jon Stewart laugh
- By Connie on 06-04-08
By: Samuel Butler
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The Narrative of Sojourner Truth
- By: Olive Gilbert
- Narrated by: Bobbie Frohman
- Length: 3 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 91
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 82
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Story4 out of 5 stars 81
A poignant biography as told to Olive Gilbert by Isabella Bomefree - a slave who later took the name of Sojourner Truth. She recounts the harshness of life under slavery, and after winner her freedom, became a vociferous abolitionist for which she has been long remembered and revered.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Requirement for seminary
- By Steven Small on 12-14-18
By: Olive Gilbert
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Foucault's Pendulum
- By: Umberto Eco
- Narrated by: Tim Curry
- Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 701
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 533
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Story4 out of 5 stars 525
One Colonel Ardenti, who has unnaturally black, brilliantined hair, a carefully groomed mustache, wears maroon socks, and who once served in the Foreign Legion, starts it all. He tells three Milan book editors that he has discovered a coded message about a Templar Plan, centuries old and involving Stonehenge, a plan to tap a mystic source of power far greater than atomic energy.
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2 out of 5 stars
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too much missing
- By Kenneth on 01-29-07
By: Umberto Eco
What listeners say about Humbugs of the World
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Chris Hummel
- 04-06-24
Fun Observations from Barnum
Barnum writes well and does a fine job discussing mid and late 19th century "humbugs" in advertising, quack medicines, spiritualism, etc. With light humor and a witty tone, Barnum's writing give you a better sense of why he became one of the great showmen of the era. For Barnum, what defines a true "humbug" is the foisting of a fake or inferior product on the public supported solely by hullabaloo. Barnum claims he always gave the public their money's worth, and there was nothing wrong with that. Interestingly, there is a long section about "Grizzly Adams" and his trained animal show--and he is apparently not the Mountain Man of mid-19th Centurey California lore or the fictionalized Dam Haggerty TV version but a different chapter entirely. We'll worth a read and a good deal of fun to hear about flim flam from the inside out.
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