There’s no getting your arms around P. T. Barnum, no safe space in the cultural imagination for this guy. With his jolly bulb of a nose and his limitless energy—that demonic, write-two-lectures-before ...

BARNUM: AN AMERICAN LIFE by Robert Wilson. Simon & Schuster, 352 pp., $28. P.T. Barnum was one of America’s first major celebrities, but history hasn’t been exactly kind to him. If you ask someone ...

The musical biography “The Greatest Showman” chronicles the life of P.T. Barnum, and it’s rather like one of Barnum’s shows in its own exuberant way: full of color, flash, spectacle and probably a ...

Jack Hitt is the author of “Bunch of Amateurs: A Search for the American Character” and most recently a co-host of the history podcast “Uncivil.” Early on in a new American century, there appeared a ...

You don’t have to be a sucker to enjoy “The Greatest Showman,” but it doesn’t hurt. Of course, P.T. Barnum didn’t originate that phrase – you know, the one that generalizes the birth rate of the ...

Phineas Taylor Barnum’s future was bright. He believed from the age of 4 that his grandfather, pleased to have his grandson as his namesake, had purchased the most valuable farm in Connecticut in ...

P.T. Barnum turned circuses from shabby traveling shows rolling through sleepy small towns into ultimate spectacles people flocked to see. He truly created The Greatest Show On Earth, building ...