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Topsy, July 2013
Hardcover / e-Book
The Startling Story Of The Crooked Tailed Elephant, P.T. Barnum, And The American Wizard, Thomas Edison
Atlantic Monthly Press
July 2013
On Sale: July 2, 2013
288 pages ISBN: 0802119042 EAN: 9780802119049 Kindle: B00B77AI1G Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction History
In 1903, on Coney Island, an elephant named Topsy was
electrocuted, and over the past century, this bizarre,
ghoulish execution has reverberated through popular culture
with the whiff of urban legend. But it really happened, and
many historical forces conspired to bring Topsy, Thomas
Edison, and those 6600 volts of alternating current together
that day. Tracing them all in Topsy The Startling Story
of the Crooked Tailed Elephant, P.T. 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”.
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 characters—both
human and elephant—Topsy is a touching tale and an
entertaining read.
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