The Life of P.T. Barnum

This is an absolutely charming book. A good chunk at the beginning is dedicated to describing practical jokes throughout Barnum's family history as a lead-in to his career as a showman. I often found myself chuckling at his phrasing, which I believe is more than a product of the time at which he was writing. If you are looking for an objective history/biography, Barnum's autobiography is certainly no source of hard facts, but the spin he puts on his stories is an interesting piece of the truth, and my favorite part of reading this book was constantly trying to imagine how his version of his life's story would line up with the experiences of his contemporaries.