The apparitionists : a tale of phantoms, fraud, photography, and the man who captured Lincoln's ghost / Peter Manseau.
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
Record details
- ISBN: 9781501966736
- Physical Description: 1 online resource (9 hr., 31 min.)
- Edition: Unabridged.
- Publisher: Prince Frederick, Md. : Recorded Books ; 2017.
- Copyright: ℗2017
Content descriptions
General Note: | Downloadable audio file. Title from title screen. |
Restrictions on Access Note: | Access restricted to subscribing institutions. |
Participant or Performer Note: | Narrated by Jefferson Mays. |
Additional Physical Form available Note: | Downloadable applications available for access via iOS 4.0+ devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) and Android 2.1+ devices. |
System Details Note: | Mode of access: World Wide Web. Requires RBdigital Media Manager. System requirements: 200 MB of free disk space, 512 MB of RAM, Windows Installer 3.1, Microsoft .NET Framework 4 (x86 and x64), Windows Media Player 10 QA. |
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Genre: | Downloadable audio books. Audiobooks. |