Hoaxes, Humbugs and Spectacles

Featuring more than 150 black-and-white photographs, 'Hoaxes, Humbugs, and Spectacles' is a vintage collection of bizarre, unusual, and humorous pictures that explore the universal human interest in spectacle. For four years Mark Sloan traveled across America-on a proverbial shoestring-unearthing everything from tiny tin-types sold in the nineteenth century as souvenirs to previously unprinted promotional pictures of circus performers (found hidden in a box beneath somebody's bed) to a bundle of news photos rescued from the Denver Post's dumpster. These pictures, which date from the 1840s to the 1950s are like the treasures in a time capsule-years later they have the same power to amuse, amaze, and entertain." by Mark Sloan foreword by Roy Blount Jr. 162 pages.