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  • The Giant and How He Humbugged America
  • Elizabeth Bush
Murphy, Jim . The Giant and How He Humbugged America. Scholastic, 2012. 112p. illus. with photographs ISBN 978-0-439-69184-0 $19.99 R* Gr. 5-10.

Who doesn't love a brash, ambitious hoax—just as long as it doesn't result in a lost financial investment? Murphy follows nineteenth-century America's near-frenzied fascination with the Cardiff Giant, an over-seven-foot-long lifelike human form unearthed by well-diggers on Stub Newell's New York farm in 1869. Seamlessly integrating thoughtful social history with delightful bamboozlement, Murphy unveils the scheme that would simultaneously tweak the noses of Biblical literalists, arouse heated discourse among underinformed "scientific experts," and make the perpetrators (and a few creators of audacious knockoffs) a mountain of money, much of it actually quite legal according to law of the period. Chapters are short and clearly organized, font is large and leading wide, illustrations are plentiful, and an introductory "Cast of Characters" list is included, making this already enticing topic accessible to a wide spectrum of readers. A brisk, chatty narrative style creates a comfort zone even for readers who don't dabble much in nonfiction: "Yes, Stub Newell was lying! But he wasn't as big a liar as George Hull. Hull had the unique ability to look a person straight in the eyes and say convincingly that he was being absolutely honest when in truth he was stealing the person blind." Source notes, an index, and a selected bibliography are included. [End Page 159]

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