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Wonder shows: performing science, magic, and religion in America
Fred Nadis
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Cover
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Title Page
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Copyright and Permissions
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List of Illustrations
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List of Film Clips
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[Dedication]
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Acknowledgments
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Preface
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[Epigraph]
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Part I Electric Wonders
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Introduction Beyond the Z-Ray
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[Intro]
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The Natural History of Wonder
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Wonder in America
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The Rescue of "Progress"
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Beyond the Z-Ray
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On Vanishing Acts and Historical Analysis
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Chapter One The Electric Wonder Show
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[Intro]
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The Advent of the Forty-foot Flea
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"I Bid You Hope"
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"A Curious Case"
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Selling to Barnum
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Chapter Two The Techno-Wizard
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[Intro]
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Toward the Electrical Wedding
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Mr. Brown's Crusade
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Gala Nights at the White City
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Thomas Edison Conquers Mars
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In Pursuit of "Entity X"
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Part II Mystic Vaudeville
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Chapter Three The Hypnotist
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[Intro]
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Marvelous Somnambules
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Dime Museum Scientists
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Enter the Master of "Bodic Forces"
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The Regulation of "Degrading Exhibitions"
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Progressive Entertainment or Grotesque Performance?
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Chapter Four The Magician
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[Intro]
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If Not Spirits What Is It?
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The Strenuous Life of Harry Houdini
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If There Is Anything in This Belief in Spiritism
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The Medium Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even
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Houdini Lives!
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Enchantments in the Age of Disenchantment
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Chapter Five The Mind Reader
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[Intro]
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"The Curtain of the Mind Uplifted"
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Love, Marriage, and Telepathy
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An Otherworldly Meteorological Bureau
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"Is Sense Necessary?"
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Behaviorism versus the Other-dimensional Mind
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A Showman Responds
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Part III Millennial Wonders
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Chapter Six The Missionaries
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[Intro]
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Professor Frost's Remarkable Astraphone
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Conjuring in the House of Magic
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The Million-volt Man
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More Sugar for the Science Pill
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Chapter Seven Flying Saucers
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[Intro]
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Mars Revealed: Or, Seven Days in the Spirit World
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Nikola Tesla Unbound
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Free Energy, Perpetual Motion, and Free Enterprise
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A New Sisterhood of Reform
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Chapter Eight The Many Gospels
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[Intro]
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Atlantis Rising
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The Other Side of the World
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Welding with Water Gas, or Fog Alarms in the Night
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Grassroots Wonder and Salesmanship
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Pseudoscience Revisited
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Bibliographical Essay
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[Intro]
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Electricity
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Hypnotism
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Magic
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Spiritualism and Parapsychology
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Gee-Whiz Science
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UFOs and the Occult
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Skeptics All
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Notes
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Preface
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Introduction Beyond the Z-Ray
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Chapter One The Electric Wonder Show
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Chapter Two The Techno-Wizard
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Chapter Three The Hypnotist
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Chapter Four The Magician
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Chapter Five The Mind Reader
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Chapter Six The Missionaries
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Chapter Seven Flying Saucers
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Chapter Eight The Many Gospels
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Index
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About the Author
Journal Abbreviation | Label | URL |
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TC | 47.2 (April 2006): 421-423 | http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/technology_and_culture/v047/47.2nye.html |
HEB Id | Title | Authors | Publication Information |
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heb00970.0001.001 | The Shows of London. | Altick, Richard D. | Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978. |
Public Culture in the Early Republic: Peale's Museum and Its Audience. | Brigham, David B. | Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995. | |
How Superstition Won and Science Lost: Popularizing Science and Health in the United States. | Burnham, John C. | New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987. | |
heb05324.0001.001 | Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750. | Daston, Lorraine, and Katherine Park. | New York: Zone Books, 1998. |
heb90018.0001.001 | The Body Electric: How Strange Machines Built the Modern American. | de la Pena, Carolyn T. | New York: New York University Press, 2003. |
Humbug: The Art of P. T. Barnum. | Harris, Neil. | Boston: Little Brown, 1973. | |
The Village Enlightenment in America: Popular Religion and Science in the Nineteenth Century. | Hazen, Craig James. | Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2000. | |
Science and Religion in America, 1800-1860. | Hovenkamp, Herbert. | Philadelphia: University of Pennslyvania Press, 1978. | |
heb05329.0001.001 | Frankenstein's Children: Electricity, Exhibition, and Experiment in Early Nineteenth-Century London. | Morus, Iwan Rhys. | Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. |
The Religion of Technology: The Divinity of Man and the Spirit of Invention. | Noble, David F. | New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997. | |
heb00179.0001.001 | Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology, 1880-1940. | Nye, David E. | Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1990. |
Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television. | Scone, Jeffrey. | Durham: Duke University Press, 2000. | |
Mr. Peale's Museum: Charles Willson Peale and the First Popular Museum of Natural Science and Art. | Sellers, Charles Coleman. | New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1980. | |
heb05328.0001.001 | Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life. | Shapin, Steven, and Simon Schaffer. | Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989. |
The Death and Resurrection Show: From Shaman to Superstar. | Taylor, Rogan P. | London: A. Blond, 1985. | |
From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. | Turner, Victor. | New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 2001. |
Citable Link
Published: 2006
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
- 9780813535159 (hardcover)
- 9780813538983 (ebook)