| Description |
1 online resource (9 audio files) : digital |
| Playing Time |
09:31:37 |
| Description |
audio file rda |
| Note |
Unabridged. |
| Performer |
Narrator: Jefferson Mays. |
| Summary |
.A story of faith and fraud in post-Civil War America, told through the lens of a photographer who claimed he could capture images of the dead In the early days of photography, in the death-strewn wake of the Civil War, one man seized America's imagination. A "spirit photographer," William Mumler took portrait photographs that featured the ghostly presence of a lost loved one alongside the living subject. Mumler was a sensation: The affluent and influential came calling, including Mary Todd Lincoln, who arrived at his studio in disguise amidst rumors of seances in the White House. Peter Manseau brilliantly captures a nation wracked with grief and hungry for proof of the existence of ghosts and for contact with their dead husbands and sons. It took a circus-like trial of Mumler on fraud charges, starring P. T. Barnum for the prosecution, to expose a fault line of doubt and manipulation. And even then, the judge sided with the defense-nobody ever solved the mystery of his spirit photography. This forgotten puzzle offers a vivid snapshot of America at a crossroads in its history, a nation in thrall to new technology while clinging desperately to belief |
| System Details |
Requires OverDrive Listen (file size: N/A KB) or OverDrive app (file size: 267981 KB). |
| Subject |
Mumler William H.
|
|
Photographers -- United States -- Biography.
|
|
Psychics -- United States -- History -- 19th century
|
| Genre |
Electronic audiobooks.
|
| Added Author |
Mays, Jefferson.
|
| ISBN |
9781501966736 (sound recording) |
|
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