Topsy: The Startling Story of the Crooked Tailed Elephant, P.T. Barnum, and the American Wizard, Thomas Edison
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.39 (695 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0802119042 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 288 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2013-06-05 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
But it really happened, and many historical forces conspired to bring Topsy, Thomas Edison, and those 6600 volts of alternating current together that day. This brought Topsy to America, fraudulently billed as the first native-born, and caught between the circus disputes and the War of the Currents, in which Edison and George Westinghouse (and Nikola Tesla) battled over alternating versus direct current.Rich in period Americana, and full of circus tidbits and larger than life charactersboth human and elephantTopsy is a touching tale and an entertaining read.. Barnum, and the American Wizard, Thomas Edison, journalist Michael Daly weaves together a fascinating popular history, the first book on this astonishing tale.At the turn of the century, the circus in America was at its apex with the circuses of P.T. Barnum and Adam Forepaugh (or 4-Paw) competing in a War of the Elephants, with declarations of whose pachyderms were younger, bigger, or more sacred”. Tracing them all in Topsy The Startling Story of the Crooked Tailed Elephant, P.T. In 1903, on Coney Island, an elephant named Topsy wa
Elephant keepers, many of whom were ill-paid alcoholics, could be just as abusive, using sharp hooks instead of kind words to control their charges. From Booklist Cruelty to animals was considered entertaining by many people in nineteenth-century America. Weaving together stories about circus rivalries and the contest between power companies to wire America, Daly recounts how a once-beloved baby elephant grew up to be condemned to a public execution using electricity, the technical innovation of the time. --Rick Roche . Not for sensitive readers. At a time when cockfighting was widespread, and draymen beating horses on city streets was common, mobs greeted traveling circuses to gawk at exotic beasts. Barnum and Adam Forepaugh touted their increasingly larger herds of elephants, sensational newspapers reported on a series of accidental deaths of their keepers. No animals suffered more
LOVED this book LOVED this book! The story was told in much detail with a minute look at circus life , as well as the history of elephants in the circus. Sometimes, it was a little hared to read about the horrific acts of cruelty towards the elephants, but important to know. I will never go to a circus again that has an animal "act".. Sad story of animal abuse and human greed. Really dealt more with the bitter rivalry between Edison and Tesla, and the extreme lengths that the former would go to try to discredit the latter. Edison also electrocuted dogs and a few human condemned criminals. All to try to prove that his method of producing electricity was better than Tesla's. Cruelty that would never be allowed today, thank good. csutherlan said Topsy. A better title would have been something about how captive elephants have given their all to make the circus what it is, today. The book is not about Topsy, only, so the title was a little misleading for me. The circus, the competition between circus owners to acquire elephants, the general acquiring of elephants, and the story of Topsy make up the full