The Apparitionists
A Tale of Phantoms, Fraud, Photography, and the Man Who Captured Lincoln's Ghost

This turned out to be rather different from what I expected, but I found it interesting. The subtitle, “A Tale of Phantoms, Fraud, and the Man Who Captured Lincoln's Ghost,” suggests that the book is about William Mumler and his spirit photography, and that is, indeed, the spine that runs through th......more

First, it's a mess as far as scope & organization. There were a few times I thought about quitting it, but then plugged on hoping that later chapters would tie things together more, or narrow the focus, or coalesce the topic by the end. It kind-of, sort-of did by the final couple of chapters, but th......more

A fascinating examination of the curious intersection of Civil War grief, Spiritualism, and photographer technology. I interviewed Peter Manseau about his book here at The Washington Post: [URL not allowed]......more

A seemingly honest tradesman falls into a lucrative new religion and becomes known as one of the leading hucksters of his day. And that’s saying a lot when he was competing with P.T. Barnum. But unfortunately, his story was really rather boring and uncomplicated. So, simply to fill it out, the autho......more

I quite liked this book. At first it was surprising to see that so much of the book was about the early days of photography. But it turned out that scams existed from the very early days of the medium.......more