The Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-bats in Nineteenth-Century New York: 0 - Hardcover

"Nature" ""The Sun and the Moon" is a wonderful cautionary tale, especially in an era like our own." "Library Journal" "This is a rollicking read." Anne Fadiman, author of "At Large and At Small" and "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down" "I doubt I will ever read another book in which newspapers, New York, and biped lunar beavers all figure prominently. Matthew Goodman has assembled his improbable cast with wit and grace." Edwin G. Burrows, co-author of Gotham ""The Sun and the Moon" is flat-out fascinating--not only for its brilliant reconstruction of one of the great newspaper hoaxes of the nineteenth century, but also for the Dickensian characters who populate its pages, each more outlandish and outrageous than the other. Hats off to Goodman for one of the most entertaining books about New York City in quite some time." Kevin Baker, author of "Dreamland" and "Paradise Alley" "The Sun and the Moon is addictive, a mesmerizing story of a great hoax, and the old New York where it came to pass. Wonderful!" "Boston Globe" "Highly entertaining." "Rocky Mountain News" "A fascinating account of the most successful hoax in the history of American journalism." "Los Angeles Times" "[A] delightful history.... The genius of "The Sun and the Moon" is that it endeavors to explore, through the lens of 19th century New York and the prism of the press, why we believe what we believe, particularly when those beliefs go beyond the pale of plausibility." "The Wall Street Journal" "Mr. Goodman has managed not only to give us a ripping good newspaper yarn but also toilluminate life in the nation's largest city in the early part of the 19th century. He also provides something of a treatise on the birth of modern mass-market newspapering." "Sky & Telescope" "Goodman presents a fascinating story about life in 19th-century New York, the savagely competitive newspaper business, and public entrancement with new sciences." "Economist," (Best Books of the Year) "In retelling the story of how, in the 1830s, the "New York Sun "tried to persuade its readers there was life on the moon, Matthew Goodman vividly brings to life a town on the brink of becoming a world-class city." "Nature" ""The Sun and the Moon" is a wonderful cautionary tale, especially in an era like our own." "Library Journal" "This is a rollicking read." Anne Fadiman, author of "At Large and At Small" and "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down" "I doubt I will ever read another book in which newspapers, New York, and biped lunar beavers all figure prominently. Matthew Goodman has assembled his improbable cast with wit and grace." Edwin G. Burrows, co-author of "Gotham" ""The Sun and the Moon" is flat-out fascinating--not only for its brilliant reconstruction of one of the great newspaper hoaxes of the nineteenth century, but also for the Dickensian characters who populate its pages, each more outlandish and outrageous than the other. Hats off to Goodman for one of the most entertaining books about New York City in quite some time." Kevin Baker, author of "Dreamland" and "Paradise Alley" "The Sun and the Moon is addictive, a mesmerizing story of a great hoax, and the old New York where it came to pass. Wonderful!"

This is the remarkable story of the outrageous newspaper hoax that captivated 19th century America and gave birth to tabloid journalism.1835 was an extraordinary year in New York City. As the most populous city in America, business was booming, its port was the busiest in the world, and a huge surge in construction was rapidly transforming the city. It was a chaotic time when anything could happen, and for a few weeks during that sweltering summer, something quite extraordinary did: the "New York Sun", the first of the city's 'penny papers', perpetrated one of the greatest hoaxes of all time when it convinced the people of New York that the moon was inhabited.In an Orson Welles-like feat that presaged the War of the Worlds radio hoax by a little over a century, the "Sun" ran a series of seven articles presenting new findings by a famous astronomer about forms of life on the moon. In astonishing detail, the author presented the various alien beings - the birds, buffalo, one-horned zebras, and four-foot-tall man-bats. As a result of the moon series, the "Sun" - an upstart working-class newspaper less than two years old - became the largest-selling newspaper in the world, and for the first time, newspapers became a truly mass market medium.Those who have written about the Moon Hoax in the past (and there are very few of them) claim that it was perpetrated by the newspaper to increase circulation. But in fact, Matthew Goodman shows, the hoax had a far more earnest basis. Its author was Richard Adams Locke, an English radical who had very strong ideas about the importance of protecting free scientific inquiry from theological influence. At the time, the most popular astronomers were the so-called religious astronomers, who believed that every heavenly body (including the moon) was inhabited, because God would not create a world without also creating intelligent beings to appreciate it. Locke intended his moon series as a satire of the religious astronomers-but his stories were so vivid that people actually believed what he had written.This extraordinary story also brings in a host of sub-plots, each more bizarre than the first, involving names such as showman PT Barnum and writer Edgar Allen Poe. In "The Sun and the Moon", Goodman vividly brings to life a town on the brink of becoming a world-class city - the sites, the smells, the sounds. It is a world utterly strange and yet in many ways familiar, in which newsboys hustle their papers, editors jostle for the latest scoop, authors accuse other authors of plagiarism, science and religion compete for intellectual ascendancy, and everyone has their eyes glued to a newspaper.