Pt barnum autobiography summary of the cask

Some five decades into his life, Phineas Taylor Barnum from Bethel, Connecticut, had remade himself from his humble beginnings as an impoverished country boy into a showman—indeed the “greatest showman,” as the new musical about his life would say—of his generation.

Thanks to a combination of brilliant marketing tactics and less-than-upstanding business practices, Barnum had truly arrived, and with his book Humbugs of the World, in 1865, Barnum wanted to inform you, his audience, that he hadn’t achieved his rags-to-riches success story by scamming the public.

Barnum's career trafficked in curiosities, which he served up to a public hungry for such entertainment, regardless of how factual or ethical such displays were.

His legacy in show business stretched from the American Museum to "P. T. Barnum's Grand Traveling Museum