Freak Show

Freak Show
Author: Robert Bogdan
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2014-12-10
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 022622743X

This cultural history of the travelling freak show in America chronicles the rise and fall of the industry as attitudes about disability evolved. From 1840 until 1940, hundreds of freak shows crisscrossed the United States, from the smallest towns to the largest cities, exhibiting their casts of dwarfs, giants, Siamese twins, bearded ladies, savages, snake charmers, fire eaters, and other oddities. By today’s standards such displays would be considered cruel and exploitative—the pornography of disability. Yet for one hundred years the freak show was widely accepted as one of America’s most popular forms of entertainment. Robert Bogdan’s fascinating social history brings to life the world of the freak show and explores the culture that nurtured and, later, abandoned it. In uncovering this neglected chapter of show business, he describes in detail the flimflam artistry behind the shows, the promoters and the audiences, and the gradual evolution of public opinion from awe to embarrassment. Freaks were not born, Bogdan reveals; they were manufactured by the amusement world, usually with the active participation of the freaks themselves. Many of the "human curiosities" found fame and fortune, until the ascent of professional medicine transformed them from marvels into pathological specimens.

Human Oddities

Human Oddities
Author: Martin Monestier
Publisher:
Total Pages: 189
Release: 1987
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 9780806510217

Human Oddities

Human Oddities
Author: Noria Jablonski
Publisher: Counterpoint
Total Pages: 142
Release: 2005
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781593760847

A collection of short works focuses on a central theme of the human body as a landscape, in a volume that relates the experiences of such characters as separated conjoined twins, drag queens, and hospital orderlies. A first collection. Original.

Very Special People

Very Special People
Author: Frederick Drimmer
Publisher: Citadel Press
Total Pages: 367
Release: 1991
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780806512532

Siamese twins, midgets, giants, bearded ladies, and hermaphrodites are among the people profiled with compassion and insight

Anatomical Oddities

Anatomical Oddities
Author: Alice Roberts
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2022-11-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1398510076

Every part of the human body has a name - and story. But how familiar are you with your arachnoid mater or your Haversian canals? Anatomical Oddities is an artistic and linguistic adventure, taking the reader on a journey to discover the hidden landscape of the human body: its crypts and caverns, gorges, islets and mountains. Along the way, we dip into the history of our relationship with the human body and the discoveries that paved the way for modern anatomy and medicine. Quirky, bizarre and beautiful, these pages feature original artworks from Professor Alice Roberts. The intricate details of the human body, the stories of people who unearthed its secrets, and the meanings of the words we use to describe it are laid bare.

Assimilation, Love, and Other Human Oddities

Assimilation, Love, and Other Human Oddities
Author: Lyn Gala
Publisher: Lyn Gala
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2018-05-19
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781393325611

Ondry and Liam have settled into a good life, but their trading is still tied up with humans, and humans are always messy. When political changes at the human base lead Ondry to attempt a difficult trade, the pair find themselves entangled in human affairs. Liam wants to help the people he left and the worlds being torn apart. He also wants to serve Ondry with not only the pleasures of the nest but also by bringing human profits. Ondry has no hope of understanding human psychology in general, he only knows that he will hold onto his palteia with the last breath in his body, and he'd like to keep his status and his wealth too. Unfortunately, new humans bring new conflicts and he is not sure how to protect Liam. He does know one thing that humans seem to constantly forget--that the peaceful Rownt are predators and when their families are threatened, Rownt become deadly killers. Liam is his family, and Ondry will protect him with his last breath... assuming that he can recognize the dangers in time to do so.

Archaeological Oddities

Archaeological Oddities
Author: Kenneth L. Feder
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2019-03-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1538105977

Does evidence show that Native Americas residing in Utah a thousand years ago lived among dinosaurs, depicting those creatures in their rock art? Did some of those same ancient Americans also encounter visitors from other planets, painting images of space-suited aliens on canyon walls? Have archaeologists discovered evidence that members of the Lost Tribes of Israel visited ancient America, leaving their mark by engraving the Ten Commandments in Hebrew on rocks in New Mexico? And Ohio? Is there archaeological evidence of ancient Celtic visitors to the New World in the form of messages etched in stone, megalithic monuments, and even the remnants of the villages in which they lived? Are American archaeologists covering up the remains of lost cities deeply ensconced in a secret cave in Arizona and in a subterranean chamber in Missouri? Finally, have archaeologists discovered the far western outpost of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh, not in Egypt or even Africa, but in, of all places, California? Those questions and more are answered by archaeologist Ken Feder in Archaeological Oddities: A Field Guide to Forty Claims of Lost Civilizations, Ancient Visitors, and Other Strange Sites in North Americathat the above listed questions and others addressed in his book represent the equivalent of “fake news” about America’s ancient past. The forty sites he highlights are, in fact, fascinating and fun places to visit. Feder’s guide provides an entertaining summary of those forty sites along with the practical information you’ll need to visit them. This full-color book includes over 100 fascinating photographs.

Some Human Oddities - Studies in the Queer, the Uncanny and the Fanatical

Some Human Oddities - Studies in the Queer, the Uncanny and the Fanatical
Author: Eric John Dingwall
Publisher:
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2012-05-22
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781447455936

A fascinating, humorous study of the lives of six oddly intriguing characters. Contents: St. Joseph of Copertino: the friar who flew; James Allen: the man who was not; Berbiguier: bottler of spirits; the Deacon of Paris: dead but still active; D.D. Home: sorcerer of kings; Angel Anna: the woman who failed. Includes good illustrations of each character.

Body Oddity Projects

Body Oddity Projects
Author: Rebecca Felix
Publisher: Lerner Publications (Tm)
Total Pages: 36
Release: 2019
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1541574885

Discover amazing tricks of the human body with these hands-on science projects. Step-by-step instructions and photos guide readers through each project, and Science Takeaway sidebars explain the science behind the results.

A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities

A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities
Author: Jan Bondeson
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2019-01-24
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1501733451

Long ago, curiosities were arranged in cabinets for display: a dried mermaid might be next to a giant's shinbone, the skeletons of conjoined twins beside an Egyptian mummy. In ten essays, Jan Bondeson brings a physician's diagnostic skills to various unexpected, gruesome, and extraordinary aspects of the history of medicine: spontaneous human combustion, colonies of snakes and frogs living in a person's stomach, kings and emperors devoured by lice, vicious tribes of tailed men, and the Two-Headed Boy of Bengal. Bondeson tells the story of Mary Toft, who gained notoriety in 1726 when she allegedly gave birth to seventeen rabbits. King George I, the Prince of Wales, and the court physicians attributed these monstrous births to a "maternal impression" because Mary had longed for a meal of rabbit while pregnant. Bondeson explains that the fallacy of maternal impressions, conspicuous in the novels of Goethe, Sir Walter Scott, and Charles Dickens, has ancient roots in Chinese and Babylonian manuscripts. Bondeson also presents the tragic case of Julia Pastrana, a Mexican Indian woman with thick hair growing over her body and a massive overgrowth of the gums that gave her a simian or ape-like appearance. Called the Ape Woman, she was exhibited all over the world. After her death in 1860, Julia's husband, who had also been her impresario, had her body mummified and continued to exhibit it throughout Europe. Bondeson tracked the mummy down and managed to diagnose Julia Pastrana's condition as the result of a rare genetic syndrome.