Review: American Side by Marc Hartzman

How appropriate that this is my first book review. I am all for the not normal, (which, actually, what is normal if we're being picky here), and I'm tired of only hearing about books that EVERYONE is reading. Fifty Shades of Grey? Fifty Shades of I Don't Give a Fuck! So, here is a place that I hope people find interesting books and start to go past what is in the New York Times Best Selling List.

American Sideshow by Marc Hartzman

Overview: This book gives the history of the American Sideshow Freaks from starting at the early 1800's to the present. The book is broken into Sideshows of yesterday to the ones of today. It gives brief histories of the more famous and known freaks and also the not so known freaks. It contains many pictures of said freaks and in between freaks gives little interesting snippets of the sideshow or the disorder that many of them had.

The Writing and Words: The way this book is broken into sections is the first half is the old sideshow freaks from the 1800's to the mid 1950's. This is where you read a lot about P.T. Branum, The Ringling Brothers, and Baily's Circus. Most of the freaks highlighted in this section are either born with a disorder that pretty much forced them into sideshow work or accidents that caused them to become freaks. Most of the chapters here have pictures at the beginning of the brief histories of the freaks, however, some are lacking either due to not having a picture of the freak or maybe copyright issues, (I'll talk more about that in the next sections). The second half focuses of the Sideshows of today like The Jim Rose Circus Sideshow and the Coney Island Sideshow by the Seashore. Much like the first half it has brief histories and pictures of freaks. However, unlike their early counterparts, most of today's freaks are "self-made" freaks. They were not born with disorders to display and most either did extreme body modification or learned side show tricks like sword swallowing and blowing fire.

My Opinion: I really enjoyed this book and went through it in about a weekend. If you go into with little to no knowledge about the sideshows, it's very eye opening. The first half of the book is way more interesting because the people of the sideshow of yore' were such natural human oddities. What's fascinating about the early days is that most of these "freaks" were very refined, smart, and knowledgeable people. Unfortunately, some of the freaks didn't have pictures, which is fine, but in the case Sam Alexander, The Man with two Faces and Count Orloff, The Only Living Transparent and Ossified Man, I don't understand why they didn't include pictures. I was just fortunate enough to see these pictures online before I read the book.

                                                Sam Alexander: The Man With Two Faces

                                     Count Orloff: the Only Living Transparent and Ossified Man

The second part of the book isn't nearly as interesting. People generally frown on displaying people with "disorders" as sideshow freaks and with TV and the internet, why would you need to leave your home to see these freaks? The self-made freaks, although props to them for keeping some of the sideshow alive, are often times boring and not nearly as fascinating as the freaks from the early 1800's. I found myself skimming most of the second part of the book.

Overall, this book is a really good and interesting read.  I really enjoyed the first half a lot and it definitely makes you appreciate how these people didn't let their handicaps, well, handicap them. It made me feel crappy about my own intelligence as these people learned skills with little to no limbs. The Two Faced Man is my favorite by far and Schlitzie has always made me feel creeped out. Really makes me want to go out and find the 1930's movie Freaks! which featured a lot of the freaks from the early 1900's.

So, if you've got a couple of afternoons to kill and are wanting something REALLY different to read, here's your book.