The Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York

From Publishers Weekly
Goodman offers a highly atmospheric account of a hoax that he says reflects the birth of tabloid journalism and New York City's emergence as a city with worldwide influence. In August 1835, New York Sun editor Richard Adams Locke wrote and published a hoax about a newfangled telescope that revealed fantastic images of the moon, including poppy fields, waterfalls and blue skies. Animals from unicorns to horned bears inhabited the moon, but most astonishing were the four-foot-tall "man-bats" who talked, built temples and fornicated in public. The sensational moon hoax was reprinted across America and Europe. Edgar Allan Poe grumbled that the tale had been cribbed from one of his short stories; Sun owner Benjamin Day saw his paper become the most widely read in the world; and a pre-eminent British astronomer complained that his good name had been linked to those "incoherent ravings." Goodman (Jewish Food) offers a richly detailed and engrossing glimpse of the birth of tabloid journalism in an antebellum New York divided by class, ethnicity and such polarizing issues as slavery, religion and intellectual freedom. B&w illus. (Nov.)
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From Booklist
Benjamin Day was the publisher of the New York Sun in the early 1800s who famously quipped,”If a dog bites a man, that’s not news. But if a man bites a dog, that’s news.” Day and his paper provide journalist Goodman with an entry point into the New York City of 1835—crowded, filthy, filled with cholera and crime, and alive with possibility for hucksters of all sorts. Goodman showcases a series of articles published by the Sun in the summer of 1835 that purported to describe life on the moon, filled with flying man-bats. He takes off from these articles and their success (papers sold out so fast that starving newsboys were kept in oysters and good lodgings for weeks) to a description of 1835 New York. Connections are fairly flimsy, and this lacks the narrative drive of The Devil in the White City or Seabiscuit. Still, if the book fails as creative nonfiction, it still tells an intriguing story and reveals some fascinating facts about nineteenth-century New York. --Connie Fletcher
Review
The Sun and the Moon is flat-out fascinating not only for its brilliant reconstruction of one of the great newspaper hoaxes of the nineteenth century, but also for the Dickensian characters who populate its pages, each more outlandish and outrageous than the other. Hats off to Goodman for one of the most entertaining books about New York City in quite some time. --Edwin G. Burrows, co-author of Gotham

[A] delightful history....The genius of The Sun and the Moon is that it endeavors to explore, through the lens of 19th-century New York and the prism of the press, why we believe what we believe, particularly when those beliefs go beyond the pale of plausibility. --Los Angeles Times

[H]ighly atmospheric....[A] richly detailed and engrossing glimpse of the birth of tabloid journalism in an antebellum New York divided by class, ethnicity and such polarizing issues as slavery, religion and intellectual freedom. --Publishers Weekly --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

Review
Nature
“The Sun and the Moon is a wonderful cautionary tale, especially in an era like our own.”


Library Journal
“This is a rollicking read.”



Anne Fadiman, author of At Large and At Small and The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
“I doubt I will ever read another book in which newspapers, New York, and biped lunar beavers all figure prominently. Matthew Goodman has assembled his improbable cast with wit and grace.”



Edwin G. Burrows, co-author of Gotham
“The Sun and the Moon is flat-out fascinating—not only for its brilliant reconstruction of one of the great newspaper hoaxes of the nineteenth century, but also for the Dickensian characters who populate its pages, each more outlandish and outrageous than the other. Hats off to Goodman for one of the most entertaining books about New York City in quite some time.”



Kevin Baker, author of Dreamland and Paradise Alley
“The Sun and the Moon is addictive, a mesmerizing story of a great hoax, and the old New York where it came to pass. Wonderful!”



Boston Globe
“Highly entertaining.”



Rocky Mountain News
“A fascinating account of the most successful hoax in the history of American journalism.”



Los Angeles Times
“[A] delightful history…. The genius of The Sun and the Moon is that it endeavors to explore, through the lens of 19th century New York and the prism of the press, why we believe what we believe, particularly when those beliefs go beyond the pale of plausibility.”



The Wall Street Journal
“Mr. Goodman has managed not only to give us a ripping good newspaper yarn but also to illuminate life in the nation’s largest city in the early part of the 19th century. He also provides something of a treatise on the birth of modern mass-market newspapering.”



Sky & Telescope
“Goodman presents a fascinating story about life in 19th-century New York, the savagely competitive newspaper business, and public entrancement with new sciences.”



Economist, (Best Books of the Year)
“In retelling the story of how, in the 1830s, the New York Sun tried to persuade its readers there was life on the moon, Matthew Goodman vividly brings to life a town on the brink of becoming a world-class city.”


Product Description
The remarkable true story of the hoax that bewildered Nineteenth-Century New York and created tabloid journalism.

In the sweltering summer of 1835, New York City, still reeling from the effects of a cholera epidemic, was coaxed into a mood approaching mass hysteria by a series of articles in the Sun, the first of New York City's penny papers. Seven articles, purporting to be the first report of the lunar discoveries made by a world-famous British astronomer, described in astonishing detail the existence of life on the moon--birds, buffalo, one-horned zebras, and four-foot-tall man bats. Intended as a satirical attack on the religious philosophers of the day, "The Moon Hoax" became the most widely circulated newspaper story in the world. And the Sun, a brash working-class upstart paper less than two years old, became the most widely read newspaper in the world, giving birth to a media revolution in the New World and a brand of tabloid journalism that prevails today.

The Sun and the Moon overflows with larger than life characters--known and unknown to modern readers, including Richard Adams Locke, British radical turned newspaper editor and creator of the hoax; a young, upwardly mobile, and ever industrious P. T. Barnum; and the fledgling editor of the Southern Literary Messenger, a fellow named Edgar Allan Poe. These three men, along with countless others, have parts to play in the delightful, entertaining, and surprisingly true story of how the Moon Hoax captivated New Yorkers and ultimately triggered the birth of the modern newspaper business.