STEP RIGHT UP FOR A BOOK YOU WON’T BELIEVE!
DEVIL’S CARNIVAL
The Gaff, the Ballyhoo, The Midway, the Freak Show, Pickled Punks, Lingering Ghosts & The Secret History of American Circuses and Sideshows
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THE DEVIL’S CARNIVAL
BY TROY TAYLOR (2024)
Take a trip back in time with the owner of the American Oddities Museum, Troy Taylor, as he reveals the secret histories of America’s circuses, sideshows, midways, and freak shows! Discover the rise and fall of a kind of entertainment imported from Europe but one that became purely American on this side of the Atlantic. You’ll find out about the big tops, carnivals, sideshows, ballyhoos, baby shows, grind shows, illusions, mitt camps, walk-throughs, and everything in-between – a nearly forgotten part of our history that’s been erased by the changing tastes of the American public.
This book will take you behind the canvas tent flaps of yesterday to the heyday of the carnival sideshow, when human oddities appeared as “freaks.” You’ll discover how many of these enterprising performers made a very good living, while others were cheated and abused. But all of them, no matter how strange or unusual they appeared, were also regular people who laughed, loved, and lived a life that few of us can even imagine – lives that sometimes ended in pain, sorrow, and even murder.
This is a book unlike anything Troy Taylor has written before -- a rich, colorful history of a secret and sometimes mysterious part of American life, filled with heroes, villains, disasters, fires, trainwrecks, murder, and even ghosts.
So, step right up and let this book serve as your ticket to a time and place that has been almost forgotten and take a stroll down the midway of the past where yesterday seems to be “Alive, Alive, Alive!”