P.T. Barnum: A Captivating Guide to the American Showman Who Founded What Became the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus
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Narrated by:
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Duke Holm
About this listen
Explore the Captivating Life of P. T. Barnum
He wasn’t always the Great Showman. In fact, Phineas Taylor Barnum grew up in relative poverty with only his wits to help him along. When his father died, the 15-year-old boy entered the working world as a shopkeeper’s assistant. In leaps and bounds, he worked his way from assistant to shop owner, lottery office owner, and, eventually, entertainment promoter. The bulk of his career was focused on his beloved American Museum, where thousands of ticket holders flocked every day to look at the human oddities, stuffed animals, live whale, and American memorabilia. In the Barnum and Bailey Circus, we see the culmination of the renowned man’s life’s work.
Some of the topics covered in this audiobook include:
- The Inn-Keeper’s Son
- Lottery Mania
- The Herald of Freedom
- Leasing Joice Heth
- Barnum’s American Museum
- General Tom Thumb Goes to England
- The Swedish Nightingale
- "The Drunkard" at the Moral Lecture Room
- Bankruptcy and Criticism
- The Family Man
- Publicist, Showman, Author
- The Nancy Fish Era
- The Greatest Show on Earth
- More Politicking
- The Blackface Minstrels
- The Last Show
- And much more!
Get the audiobook now to learn more about P. T. Barnum!
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Taking on the Trust
- The Epic Battle of Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller
- By: Steve Weinberg
- Narrated by: Pam Ward
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Long before the rise of mega-corporations like Wal-Mart and Microsoft, Standard Oil controlled the oil industry with a monopolistic force unprecedented in American business history. Undaunted by the ruthless power of its owner, John D. Rockefeller, a fearless and ambitious reporter named Ida Minerva Tarbell confronted the company known simply as "The Trust".
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Annoying Narrator
- By Nate on 04-03-15
By: Steve Weinberg
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Winston Churchill
- A Captivating Guide to the Life of Winston Churchill
- By: Captivating History
- Narrated by: Sean Daily
- Length: 1 hr and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Any general biography of Winston S. Churchill will provide an overview of his greatest achievements, but Churchill had other goals and desires that are often ignored and forgotten. What were they? Churchill had a family - a childhood and children of his own - and a political career that began at a young age. He spoke with and entertained some of the biggest names in the world, within both the political and social realms. How did he interact with Franklin D. Roosevelt?
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Had A Great Time With It
- By Mark on 09-23-17
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Captive of the Labyrinth
- Sarah L. Winchester, Heiress to the Rifle Fortune
- By: Mary Jo Ignoffo
- Narrated by: Nan McNamara
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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The first full-length biography of Sarah Winchester, the subject of the movie Winchester starring Helen Mirren, now available for the first time in audio. Since her death in 1922, Sarah Winchester has been perceived as a mysterious, haunted figure. After inheriting a vast fortune upon the death of her husband in 1881, Sarah purchased a simple farmhouse in San José, California. She began building additions to the house and continued construction on it for the next twenty years. A hostile press cast Sarah as the conscience of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company—a widow shouldering responsibility for the many deaths caused by the rifle that brought her riches. She was accused of being a ghost-obsessed spiritualist, and to this day it is largely believed that the extensive construction she executed on her San José house was done to appease the ghouls around her. But was she really as guilt-ridden and superstitious as history remembers her? When Winchester’s home was purchased after her death, it was transformed into a tourist attraction. The bizarre, sprawling mansion and the enigmatic nature of Winchester’s life were exaggerated by the new owners to generate publicity for their business. But as the mansion has become more widely known, the person of Winchester has receded from reality, and she is only remembered for squandering her riches to ward off disturbed spirits.
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Facts to Silence the Myths
- By Carmen Gibson on 03-07-24
By: Mary Jo Ignoffo
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When Paris Sizzled
- The 1920s Paris of Hemingway, Chanel, Cocteau, Cole Porter, Josephine Baker, and Their Friends
- By: Mary McAuliffe
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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When Paris Sizzled vividly portrays the City of Light during the fabulous 1920s, les Annees folles, when Parisians emerged from the horrors of war to find that a new world greeted them - one that reverberated with the hard metallic clang of the assembly line, the roar of automobiles, and the beat of jazz. Mary McAuliffe traces a decade that saw seismic change on almost every front, from art and architecture to music, literature, fashion, entertainment, transportation, and, most notably, behavior.
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Informative, but no sizzle
- By OzEnigma on 06-01-17
By: Mary McAuliffe
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Ida M. Tarbell
- The Woman Who Challenged Big Business - and Won!
- By: Emily Arnold McCully
- Narrated by: Emily Arnold McCully
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Born in 1857 and raised in oil country, Ida M. Tarbell was one of the first investigative journalists and probably the most influential in her time. Her series of articles on the Standard Oil Trust, a complicated business empire run by John D. Rockefeller, revealed to readers the underhanded, even illegal practices that had led to Rockefeller's success.
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Excellent!
- By AKA1 on 03-16-19
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Benjamin Franklin: A Captivating Guide to an American Polymath and a Founding Father of the United States of America
- By: Captivating History
- Narrated by: Desmond Manny
- Length: 3 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Benjamin Franklin was a Founding Father of America and had an enormous impact on America as it is today. In addition to that, there are many little-known facts about the man who is Benjamin Franklin. Unlike many of the other Founding Fathers, he started out in humble circumstances. From a young age, Benjamin Franklin fought for the rights of America at home and abroad. Yet, he bore the burdens of leadership and never shirked nor faltered in his mission. His greatest asset was his charm and friendliness, but he had his detractors as well and felt the emotional impact of that.
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Excellent Audiobook
- By Jaxon Jordon on 02-10-19
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The Black Russian
- By: Vladimir Alexandrov
- Narrated by: Peter Marinker
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The Black Russian is the incredible story of Frederick Bruce Thomas, born in 1872 to former slaves who became prosperous farmers in Mississippi. After leaving the South and working as a waiter and valet in Chicago and Brooklyn, Frederick sought greater freedom in London, then crisscrossed Europe, and - in a highly unusual choice for a black American at the time - went to Russia in 1899. Because he found no color line there, Frederick made Moscow his home. He renamed himself Fyodor Fyodorovich Tomas, married twice, acquired a mistress, and took Russian citizenship.
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US Born African Descendant 2 Russian Citizenship
- By Sheila Gibson on 03-14-15
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An Imperfect God
- George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America
- By: Henry Wiencek
- Narrated by: Rick Adamson
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Abridged
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Washington was born and raised among Blacks and mixed-race people; he and his wife had blood ties to the slave community. Yet as a young man he bought and sold slaves without scruple, even raffled off children to collect debts (an incident ignored by earlier biographers). Then, on the Revolutionary battlefields where he commanded both Black and White troops, Washington's attitudes began to change.
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Excellent handling of one part of Wahington's life
- By buffaloboy on 05-20-04
By: Henry Wiencek
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Secret Lives of the First Ladies
- What Your Teachers Never Told you About the Women of The White House
- By: Cormac O'Brien
- Narrated by: Teresa DeBerry
- Length: 12 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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With chapters on every woman who’s ever made it to the White House, Secret Lives of the First Ladies tackles all of the tough questions that other history books are afraid to ask: How many of these women owned slaves? Which ones were cheating on their husbands? And why was Eleanor Roosevelt serving hot dogs to the King and Queen of England? American history was never this much fun in school
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Trivia delight
- By Jean on 01-11-15
By: Cormac O'Brien
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Emily Post
- Daughter of the Gilded Age, Mistress of American Manners
- By: Laura Claridge
- Narrated by: Christine Williams
- Length: 18 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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From the excesses of the late 19th-century Gilded Age, through the horrors of World War I, to the transformations of the Roaring 20s that gave birth to her magisterial Etiquette, Emily Post unfailingly took the measure of her era. A Baltimore blue blood with a populist heart, she helped the masses live the American dream with her hugely popular book, which has been continuously in print for over 85 years.
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Typical for Emily Post
- By Stephanie on 01-07-19
By: Laura Claridge
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100 Amazing Facts About the Negro
- By: Henry Louis Gates Jr.
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 14 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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With élan and erudition - and with winning enthusiasm - Henry Louis Gates Jr. gives us a corrective yet loving homage to Rogers' work. Relying on the latest scholarship, Gates leads us on a romp through African, diasporic, and African American history in question-and-answer format. Among the 100 questions: Who were Africa's first ambassadors to Europe? Who was the first black president in North America? Did Lincoln really free the slaves? Who was history's wealthiest person? What percentage of white Americans have recent African ancestry?
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great book
- By Anthony Costello on 06-14-18
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Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
- By: Walter Isaacson
- Narrated by: Nelson Runger
- Length: 24 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us - an ambitious urban entrepreneur who rose up the social ladder, from leather-aproned shopkeeper to dining with kings. In best-selling author Walter Isaacson's vivid and witty full-scale biography, we discover why Franklin turns to us from history's stage with eyes that twinkle from behind his new-fangled spectacles. In Benjamin Franklin, Isaacson shows how Franklin defines both his own time and ours. The most interesting thing that Franklin invented, and continually reinvented, was himself.
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Good book, not crazy about the narrator
- By Cathi on 07-20-13
By: Walter Isaacson
What listeners say about P.T. Barnum: A Captivating Guide to the American Showman Who Founded What Became the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Randall Torrez
- 07-04-18
An Important History.
This is the most fun I've had reading history in years. The stories are told with gusto. The book's design is delightful. Better yet, the history IS important. I discovered that PT Barnum is more than a circus guy. His innovations in the art of marketing, advertising, celebrity are still with us today. An amazing book, all the way around.
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- Janet Crawford
- 07-04-18
t may not be what you expect.
This is a decent book, but not quite what I was imagining. The title suggests a emphasis on fraud, but the balance is more on the development of laws and regulations intended to prevent fraud. A better summary of the book is this from the dust wrapper:
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- Amazon Customer nutbutter
- 09-23-18
greatest. show
and showman still,bittersweet goodbye to the circus,great story about a god man,lot of unknown facts
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- Aryeh Madina
- 07-03-18
Very good read.
Very interesting autobiography. I only wish the introduction was a little more detailed so I could put the writing into better perspective.
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- Alexander B. Talbot
- 06-29-18
A wonderful book...
The bulk of this author’s career was absorbed on his cherished American Museum, where thousands of ticket-holders gathered every day to look at the human oddities, stuffed animals, live whale, and American memorabilia. In the Barnum and Bailey Circus, we see the culmination of the renowned man’s life’s work.
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- Gail Bishop
- 06-29-18
This book is a great...
I think he was not always the great man. Actually, Barnum raised up in relative deficiency with only his wits to help him along. When his father died, the 15 years old kid move in the working world as a shopkeeper’s associate. In leaps and bounds, he worked his way from assistant to shop owner, lottery office owner, and eventually, entertainment promoter.
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- Silaoon Rome
- 07-04-18
You've come to the right place!
Barnum appeared to be a go-getter from day one. He was a young entrepreneur with extraordinary math skills and by the time he reached the age of seven he was earning so much money, his father asserted he purchase his own clothing. He was quietly duped into believing he would one day be wealthy because he owned Ivy Island, in reality a mucky swamp.
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- Leroy Carter
- 07-04-18
Inspiring so for, for me.
A pithy biography of the showman that includes warts, flaws, and foibles and paints him as often callous and uncaring, but thoroughly human.
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