The Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York - Hardcover

Goodman, Matthew

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0465002579 ISBN 13: 9780465002573

Publisher: Basic Books, 2008

Synopsis

The Sun and the Moon tells the delightful, entertaining, and surprisingly true story of how in the summer of 1835 a series of articles in the Sun , the first of the city's penny papers,” convinced the citizens of New York that the moon was inhabited.

Six articles, purporting to reveal the lunar discoveries made by a world-famous British astronomer, described the life found on the moon including unicorns, beavers that walked upright, and, strangest of all, four-foot-tall flying man-bats. The series quickly became the most widely circulated newspaper story of the era. And the Sun , a brash working-class upstart less than two years old, had become the most widely read newspaper in the world.

Told in richly novelistic detail, The Sun and the Moon brings the raucous world of 1830s New York City vividly to life the noise, the excitement, the sense that almost anything was possible. The book overflows with larger-than-life characters, including Richard Adams Locke, author of the moon series (who never intended it to be a hoax at all); a fledgling showman named P.T. Barnum, who had just brought his own hoax to New York; and the young writer Edgar Allan Poe, who was convinced that the moon series was a plagiarism of his own work.

An exhilarating narrative history of a city on the cusp of greatness and a nation newly united by affordable newspapers, The Sun and the Moon may just be the strangest true story you've ever read.

About this title

About the Author:

Matthew Goodman’s nonfiction writing has appeared in The Forward , The American Scholar , Harvard Review , Brill’s Content , and The Utne Reader . He is the author of Jewish Food: The World at Table . He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and children.

From AudioFile:

New Yorkers like to think of themselves as sophisticates, but in the summer of 1835 they were anything but. An elaborate hoax, perpetrated by NEW YORK SUN editor Richard Adams Locke, tricked them into believing that the moon is inhabited by animals such as unicorns and four-foot-tall talking "man-bats." Narrator Malcolm Hillgartner's rich baritone works well with a story that could almost be fiction but isn't. His slightly melodramatic reading lends a certain tone of irony to the book, keeping the listener aware that while this is factual history, it's based on a big joke. This entertaining book gives an interesting glimpse of the early days of newspapers in New York City and how trusting and gullible readers were, once upon a time. K.M. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

About this edition

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0465002579
• ISBN 13: 9780465002573
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384