The Sun & the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-century New York (Library Edition)

In the summer of 1835, a series of articles published in the Sun convinced the citizens of New York that the moon was inhabited, describing such moon life as unicorns, beavers that walked upright, and four-foot-tall flying man-bats. This outrageous newspaper hoax gave birth to tabloid journalism. Told in richly novelistic detail, The Sun and the Moon brings the raucous world of 1830s New York City vividly to life the noise, the excitement, the sense that almost anything was possible. The book overflows with larger-than-life characters, including Richard Adams Locke, author of the moon series (who never intended it to be a hoax at all); a fledgling showman named P.T. Barnum, who had just brought his own hoax to New York; and the young writer Edgar Allan Poe, who was convinced that the moon series was a plagiarism of his own work.