The Humbugs of the World
An Account of Humbugs, Delusions, Impositions, Quackeries, Deceits, and Deceivers Generally, in All Ages
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The Humbugs of the World
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Narrated by:
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Greg Tremblay
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By:
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P. T. Barnum
About this listen
P. T. Barnum, best known for his own use of hoaxes in his popular Barnum & Bailey Circus, found that the use of hoaxes was acceptable when the audience was getting the entertainment they paid for. When it came to religious hoaxes, fraud, and swindling, Barnum was avidly against it. He even went so far as to offer $500 to any medium who could prove that they actually could reach the dead.
In this exposé of humbugs and the scams they perpetuate, he goes after religious quacks, witches and sorcerers, and other forms of frauds in all walks of life. He discusses some of the most notable scams of the time and reveals the perpetrators as humbugs. In addition to scams, he also discusses business affairs and his own opinions of the current events of his time.
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-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 67
Jonathan Swift is best remembered today as the author of Gulliver’s Travels, the satiric fantasy that quickly became a classic and has remained in print for nearly three centuries. Yet Swift also wrote many other influential works, was a major political and religious figure in his time, and became a national hero, beloved for his fierce protest against English exploitation of his native Ireland. What is really known today about the enigmatic man behind these accomplishments? Can the facts of his life be separated from the fictions?
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5 out of 5 stars
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JOHNATHAN SWIFT AND POWER OF THE PEN
- By chetyarbrough.blog on 09-30-14
By: Leo Damrosch
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The Sun and the Moon
- Hoaxers, Showmen, and Lunar Man-Bats in 19th-Century New York
- By: Matthew Goodman
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 70
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 39
The Sun and the Moon tells the delightful and surprisingly true story of how a series of articles in the Sun newspaper in 1835 convinced the citizens of New York that the moon was inhabited. Purporting to reveal discoveries of a famous British astronomer, the series described such moon life as unicorns, beavers that walked upright, and four-foot-tall flying man-bats. It quickly became the most widely circulated newspaper story of the era.
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3 out of 5 stars
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some very good some very bad
- By peter on 10-30-10
By: Matthew Goodman
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Plain Tales from the Hills
- By: Rudyard Kipling
- Narrated by: Martin Jarvis
- Length: 4 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 72
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Story4 out of 5 stars 40
An intimate, evocative, often funny, and always vital portrait of India at the peak of the British Raj. Written at the age of 22, they immediately show Kipling's natural and prodigious talent. Timeless, they can be listened to forever.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Gentle irony
- By Simon Bowler on 01-25-06
By: Rudyard Kipling
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Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
- By: Charles MacKay
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 27 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 115
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 101
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Story4 out of 5 stars 102
Why do otherwise intelligent individuals form seething masses of idiocy when they engage in collective action? We may think that the Great Crash of 1929, junk bonds of the '80s, and over-valued high-tech stocks of the '90s are peculiarly 20th century aberrations, but Mackay's classic - first published in 1841 - shows that the madness and confusion of crowds knows no limits, and has no temporal bounds.
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5 out of 5 stars
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People don't change
- By J. on 07-05-16
By: Charles MacKay
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Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Stories
- By: Edgar Allan Poe
- Narrated by: Earl Hammond
- Length: 1 hr and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 404
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 362
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Story4 out of 5 stars 363
A collection featuring three classic horror stories, read by actor Earl Hammond: "The Tell-Tale Heart", "The Cask of Amontillado", and "The Black Cat".
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent Narrator Brought The Story To Life
- By M.A. Wilson on 11-09-14
By: Edgar Allan Poe
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The Club
- Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age
- By: Leo Damrosch
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 372
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 308
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 303
In 1763, the painter Joshua Reynolds proposed to his friend Samuel Johnson that they invite a few friends to join them every Friday at the Turk's Head Tavern in London to dine, drink, and talk until midnight. Eventually, the group came to include among its members Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, and James Boswell. It was known simply as "the Club". In this captivating audiobook, Leo Damrosch brings alive a brilliant, competitive, and eccentric cast of characters.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful survey
- By Tad Davis on 05-10-19
By: Leo Damrosch
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The Confidence-Man
- His Masquerade
- By: Herman Melville
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 48
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Story4 out of 5 stars 39
Evoking Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, this is a story of interlocking tales from a group of steamboat passengers traveling down the Mississippi toward New Orleans. Aboard the Fidèle can be found all manner of con men, from those selling stock in failing companies and herbal cure-all "medicines" to those who are raising money for supposed charitable organizations and those who simply ask for money outright.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Trust and the confidence man
- By Nelson on 01-24-22
By: Herman Melville
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The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
- By: James Weldon Johnson
- Narrated by: Richard Allen
- Length: 6 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 72
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 63
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 63
Originally published anonymously in 1912, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man revealed as never before the color line dividing America, and the price it exacted on those souls who could traverse the two worlds. The book presents the fictional account of "an ex-colored man" - an African-American who could pass for white - as he attempts to choose which side of the line will better suit his life, and his psyche.
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5 out of 5 stars
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New favorite
- By Jess on 03-19-15
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Mark Twain
- A Life
- By: Ron Powers
- Narrated by: Ron Powers
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 121
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 77
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 76
Mark Twain founded the American voice. His works are a living national treasury: taught, quoted, and reprinted more than those of any writer except Shakespeare. His awestruck contemporaries saw him as the representative figure of his times, and his influence has deeply flavored the 20th and 21st centuries.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Buy the Book
- By W.Denis on 10-22-05
By: Ron Powers
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The Apparitionists
- A Tale of Phantoms, Fraud, Photography, and the Man Who Captured Lincoln's Ghost
- By: Peter Manseau
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 41
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 36
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Story4 out of 5 stars 35
In the early days of photography, in the death-strewn wake of the Civil War, one man seized America's imagination. A "spirit photographer", William Mumler took portrait photographs that featured the ghostly presence of a lost loved one alongside the living subject. Mumler was a sensation. Peter Manseau brilliantly captures a nation wracked with grief and hungry for proof of the existence of ghosts and for contact with their dead husbands and sons. It took a circus-like trial of Mumler on fraud charges to expose a fault line of doubt and manipulation.
By: Peter Manseau
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World’s End
- The Lanny Budd Novels, Book 1
- By: Upton Sinclair
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 26 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 105
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 96
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 96
Lanning “Lanny” Budd spends his first 13 years in Europe, living at the center of his mother’s glamourous circle of friends on the French Riviera. In 1913, he enters a prestigious Swiss boarding school and befriends Rick, an English boy, and Kurt, a German. The three schoolmates are privileged, happy, and precocious - but their world is about to come to an abrupt and violent end. When the gathering storm clouds of war finally burst, raining chaos and death over the continent, Lanny must put the innocence of youth behind him.
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3 out of 5 stars
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didn't finish
- By Bird Miller on 05-08-22
By: Upton Sinclair
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The Way of All Flesh
- By: Samuel Butler
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 15 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 179
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 114
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Story4 out of 5 stars 110
This brilliant satirical novel, tracing the life and loves of Ernest Pontifex, has continued in popularity since its original publication in 1903. Every generation finds in The Way of All Flesh a reaffirmation of youth's rightful struggle against the tyranny of harsh parents and its admirable will for freedom of personal expression.
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5 out of 5 stars
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classic satire- would make Jon Stewart laugh
- By Connie on 06-04-08
By: Samuel Butler
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The Narrative of Sojourner Truth
- By: Olive Gilbert
- Narrated by: Bobbie Frohman
- Length: 3 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 91
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 82
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Story4 out of 5 stars 81
A poignant biography as told to Olive Gilbert by Isabella Bomefree - a slave who later took the name of Sojourner Truth. She recounts the harshness of life under slavery, and after winner her freedom, became a vociferous abolitionist for which she has been long remembered and revered.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Requirement for seminary
- By Steven Small on 12-14-18
By: Olive Gilbert
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Fifth Business
- The Deptford Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Robertson Davies
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 798
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 697
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 690
This first novel in The Deptford Trilogy introduces Ramsay, a man who returns from World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross but who is destined to be caught in a no man's land where memory, history, and myth collide. As we hear Ramsey tell his story, we begin to realize that, from childhood, he has influenced those around him in a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious way.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Been waiting for this
- By Vinity on 12-10-11
By: Robertson Davies
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The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
- By: Benjamin Franklin
- Narrated by: Qarie Marshall
- Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,723
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,491
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,487
Left unfinished at the time of his death, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin has endured as one of the most well-known and influential autobiographies ever written. From his early years in Boston and Philadelphia to the publication of his Poor Richard's Almanac to the American Revolution and beyond, Franklin's autobiography is a fascinating, personal exploration into the life of America's most interesting founding father.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Egregious omission of important passage.
- By Walking Man on 02-14-19