Strange! Weird! Unbelievable!

Mark Hartzman is fascinated by human oddities. That’s not why he got into advertising, but it is why he has just written American Sideshow: An Encyclopedia of History’s Most Wondrous and Curiously Strange Performers.

The FCBi senior copywriter recalls sitting wide-eyed as a kid watching The Elephant Man and obsessing over Robert Wadlow, the world’s tallest man. He ended up writing about sideshow performers in a zine he founded called Backwash. Eventually he sat down to compile this book, which covers the heyday of the American sideshow, from the 1830s to the early 1990s—introducing us to such bizarre characters as Eli Bowen, the legless acrobat; Myrtle Corbin, the four-legged woman; and Prince Randian, the human torso—up to present-day performers like Jennifer Miller, the bearded lady; and Heather Holliday, the world’s youngest female sword-swallower.