The showman who made a fortune out of the public's appetite for being fooled explains, in detail and with names, how the frauds of his century actually worked - the spirit mediums, the patent medicines, the mining shares. Barnum knew the trade from the inside and says so. This edition is bound with a gallery of 58 plates, among them paintings by Thomas Nast, Albert Bierstadt and Winslow Homer, dating from 1850 to 1894.