"Nathan Wakefield (Author) is a variety performer and sideshow historian from Southeast Michigan. Under the stage name ""Nathan McScary,"" he specializes in macabre juggling acts and innovative fire entertainment with exclusive props. Wakefield enjoys exploring the creative possibilities of object manipulation, re-creating 19th-century gentleman juggling tricks, and studying performance styles that are just plain weird. James Taylor (Forward) is the planet's foremost authority on sideshow. He is the mastermind behind Shocked and Amazed! - On & Off the Midway, the only journal devoted to variety exhibition and life in the sideshow, published through Dolphin-Moon since 1995. Taylor has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Publisher's Weekly, the Learning Channel's Sideshow: Alive on the Inside and NPR's The Derek McGinty Show."
"""An impressive survey drawing back the curtains on one of the most strange and macabre corners of the history of popular entertainment and a must-read for sideshow fans and performers... Step right up and peek inside (if you dare)."" -- Mistress Kali, The Southern Sideshow Hootenanny ""Skim through these pages and witness the spectacle of the unusual geeks, wild men, human ostriches, and regurgitators. Performers eating live animals, sometimes neatly but often violently, and others swallowing unlikely animate and inanimate objects. All in the name of entertainment.""-- Alan Howard, Performer, Author, Editor, and Aficionado of Variety Acts."