I just got an email from Matthew Goodman, a regular reader of OTBKB. He writes: "When those helicopters were buzzing overhead a few
weeks ago your blog was where I went first to find out what was going on!)."

I hope I knew what was going on.

Goodman is also the author of a new book, The
Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling
Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York, which is coming out next month from Basic Books.

The book sounds really fascinating. It tells the true story of a hoax
perpetrated in the New York Sun newspaper in 1835 that convinced New
Yorkers that life had been discovered on the moon. P.T. Barnum and Edgar
Allan Poe, among others, are involved in the story, which ultimately becomes a
fascinating (I hope) account of the struggle between science and religion in the
decades before Darwin.

 

He’ll be doing a reading from the book at the Community Bookstore on
Tuesday, Dec. 2, at 7:30.

The Where and When

Tuesday December 2, at 7:30 p.m.
The Community Bookstore
Seventh Avenue between Garfield and Carroll Street