Digitized Book of the Week

http://www.archive.org/details/lifeofptbarnum00barn
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Phineas Taylor Barnum (1810 – 1891) was an American businessman and showman who founded the circus that eventually became the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Barnum once visited Abraham Lincoln in the White House accompanied by the little person Tom Thumb (the stage name of Charles Sherwood Stratton). Given to outrageous self-promotion, Barnum loved a good hoax--his "elephantine farming" hoax (see entry) had the secretaries of every state agricultural association writing for more information about this exciting advancement in farming. A pro-Unionist, Barnum's circus and museum drew large audiences seeking respite and diversion during the American civil war. Barnum wrote several other books, including The Humbugs of the World : An account of humbugs, delusions, impositions, quackeries, deceits and deceivers generally, in all ages (1866) and Struggles and Triumphs, or, Forty years' recollections (1871).

http://www.archive.org/details/lifeoffrancesewi00gord
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"Agitate, educate, organize." Frances Elizabeth Willard (1839 – 1898) was a notable American educator and social reformer. In 1873 she became the Dean of Women of the Woman's College of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Willard served as the elected president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) from 1879 until her death. Not to be found in this reverential biography by Anna Gordon, Willard's personal secretary of 21 years, is any mention of Willard's unfortunate dispute with anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells. In her attempts to recruit southern women into the WCTU, Willard blamed lynchings not on racism, but on the alcohol fueled rapes of white women by black men. While seeing eye to eye on many other issues of the time, the two women were never able to resolve their differences on this important issue where gender and race intersected so pointedly. See also Woman and temperance : or, The work and workers of the Woman's Christian temperance union (1883) by Frances Willard and The Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States by Ida B. Wells.