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E Pluribus Barnum: The Great Showman and the Making of US. Popular Culture. By Bluford Adams. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. xvi, 249 pp. Cloth, $47.95, ISBN 0-8166-2630-8. Paper, $18.95, ISBN 08166-2631-6.)
Despite a plethora of books on P. T. Barnum ranging from the numerous editions of his own autobiographies (1855-1889) to such contemporaneous studies as Neil Harris's seminal exploration of Barnum's promotional tactics (Humbug, 1973), A. H. Saxon's definitive biography (1989), and the impressive illustrated biography by Philip B. Kunhardt Jr., Philip B. Kunhardt III, and Peter W. Kunhardt (1995), oddly omitted from Bluford Adams's otherwise exemplary bibliography-the showman continues to fascinate as an American entrepreneurial icon. Indeed, as Adams concludes, Barnum's cultural impact is perhaps not "the final expression of the American spirit" but nonetheless "surely a...