Keep Celebrating the Life of P. T. Barnum with our February Classic of the Month!

With the continued success of the film The Greatest Showman (it has now made $113 million in five weekends, and has a 90% score on Rotten Tomatoes!) we decided why stop reading about P. T. Barnum now? That is why we are continuing the month of February with The Life of P.T. Barnum by P. T. Barnum as our February Classic of the Month.

The Greatest Showman is an original musical film starring Hugh Jackman, Zac Efron, and Michelle Williams. The story was inspired by P. T. Barnum's life and his creation of the Barnum & Bailey Circus. The movie has gotten some fantastic reviews, even landing a Golden Globe Awards for Best Original Song, however, the main complaint seems to be that the movie's premise is incredibly fictionalized without being historically accurate whatsoever.

What better way is there to learn more about the story behind the famous politician and businessman than through books? Educate your friends and family before or after seeing the movie with our Classic of the Month, written by Barnum himself.

Originally published in the United States in 1855, P.T. Barnum recounts "the true history" of his adventures and the many enterprises in which he had engaged. A fascinating and—to say the least—colorful man, Barnum regales us with a storied chronicle of his checkered career, where he had been everything from farmer's boy to small town merchant to bank president and, ultimately, a master showman. 

He had frequented jails and palaces, known poverty and wealth, traveled over a large portion of two continents, and had seen all varieties of people and characters. This light-hearted, intriguing history will endeavor the reader to laugh at the antics of this inimitable showman, who, interestingly enough, never coined the phrase, "There's a sucker born every minute." 

About the Author
Phineas Taylor ("P.T.") Barnum (1810-1891) is one of the most peculiarly famous personalities in American history. A consummate showman and entrepreneur, Barnum was famous for bringing both high and low culture to American audiences. From the melodious opera singer Jenny Lind to the bizarre hoax of the Feejee Mermaid, from the clever and quite diminutive Tom Thumb to Jumbo the Elephant, Barnum's oddities, spectacles, galas, extravaganzas, and events tickled the fancies of Americans of all ages.

January Classic of the Month: The Life of P.T. Barnum

Grab your dancing shoes and warm up that singing voice! Celebrate the release of The Greatest Showman by picking up your copy of The Life of P.T. Barnum by P. T. Barnum, our January Classic of the Month!

The Greatest Showman is an original musical film starring Hugh Jackman, Zac Efron, and Michelle Williams. The story was inspired by P. T. Barnum's life and his creation of the Barnum & Bailey Circus. The movie has gotten some fantastic reviews, even landing a Golden Globe Awards for Best Original Song, however, the main complaint seems to be that the movie's premise is incredibly fictionalized without being historically accurate whatsoever.

What better way is there to learn more about the story behind the famous politician and businessman than through books? Educate your friends and family before or after seeing the movie with our January Classic of the Month, written by Barnum himself.

Originally published in the United States in 1855, P.T. Barnum recounts "the true history" of his adventures and the many enterprises in which he had engaged. A fascinating and—to say the least—colorful man, Barnum regales us with a storied chronicle of his checkered career, where he had been everything from farmer's boy to small town merchant to bank president and, ultimately, a master showman. 

He had frequented jails and palaces, known poverty and wealth, traveled over a large portion of two continents, and had seen all varieties of people and characters. This light-hearted, intriguing history will endeavor the reader to laugh at the antics of this inimitable showman, who, interestingly enough, never coined the phrase, "There's a sucker born every minute." 

About the Author
Phineas Taylor ("P.T.") Barnum (1810-1891) is one of the most peculiarly famous personalities in American history. A consummate showman and entrepreneur, Barnum was famous for bringing both high and low culture to American audiences. From the melodious opera singer Jenny Lind to the bizarre hoax of the Feejee Mermaid, from the clever and quite diminutive Tom Thumb to Jumbo the Elephant, Barnum's oddities, spectacles, galas, extravaganzas, and events tickled the fancies of Americans of all ages.

Classic of the Month: Twelve Years a Slave

In honor of its most recent Academy Awards and much deserved recognition, we are once again featuring Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup as our Classic of the Month for March.

In 1841, free-born African American Solomon Northup was offered a job in his hometown of Saratoga Springs, New York. He followed his employers to the job site at Washington, D.C., where he was beaten, drugged, kidnapped, and sold into slavery, eventually ending up on a plantation in Louisiana owned by Edwin Epps. While there, in 1852, Northup befriended Canadian carpenter Samuel Bass, who was at the time doing work for Epps. Secretly, Bass was able to contact Northup's family, who informed New York governor Washington Hunt of his kidnapping. The state was able to use a law passed in 1840 that allowed the recovery of free black men who were sold into slavery to rescue Northup. Solomon was finally made free again on January 4, 1853. One of few slaves of his era ever to regain freedom, he devoted his time and energy to lecturing and educating others about abolitionism. Northup is without a doubt, a person worth celebrating.

His story has seen a wave of media attention recently, winning three Oscars for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay. Additionally, Twelve Years received the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture - Drama as well as the Best Film award at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. Shortly thereafter, an article was published about Northup's family, interviewing his great-great-great grandson, Clayton Adams, on how Northup's story had affected him and his family. On March 4th, the New York Times released a correction apologizing for the misspelling of Northup's name in an article written about his kidnapping 161 years ago.

Twelve Years a Slave was a bestseller in its time and remains one today. Northrup's work sold approximately 30,000 copies copies when it was first released, and has recently made the New York Times Best Sellers List.

Cosimo is proud to have released both an affordable paperback and beautiful hardcover edition of Twelve Years a Slave at Barnes & Noble, as well as on Amazon (paperback and hardcover).

Classic of the Month:Twelve Years a Slave

In honor of Black History Month, we are featuring an unique and influential work about slavery that has recently achieved renewed recognition because of the release of  major feature movie of the same name:Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup.

In 1841, free-born African American Solomon Northup was offered a job in his hometown of Saratoga Springs, New York. He followed his employers to the job site at Washington, D.C., where he was beaten, drugged, kidnapped, and sold into slavery, eventually ending up on a plantation in Louisiana owned by Edwin Epps. While there, in 1852, Northup befriended Canadian carpenter Samuel Bass, who was at the time doing work for Epps. Secretly, Bass was able to contact Northup's family, who informed New York governor Washington Hunt of his kidnapping. The state was able to use a law passed in 1840 that allowed the recovery of free black men who were sold into slavery to rescue Northup. Solomon was finally made free again on January 4, 1853. One of few slaves of his era ever to regain freedom, he devoted his time and energy to lecturing and educating others about abolitionism. Northup is without a doubt, a person worth celebrating.


Twelve Years a Slave was a bestseller in its time and remains one today. Northrup's work sold approximately 30,000 copies copies when it was first released, and has made the Top Ten of the New York Times Non-Fiction Bestseller list for 2013. A recent film adaptation by Steve McQueen, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, and Brad Pitt, has also earned the story the Golden Globe for Best Drama and nine Academy Award nominations including best picture, best actor in a leading and supporting role, best actress in a supporting role, and best director.

Cosimo is proud to have released both an affordable paperback and beautiful hardcover edition of Twelve Years a Slave at Barnes & Noble, as well as on Amazon (paperback and hardcover).

Twelve Years a Slave Takes Top Golden Globe Award and Receives Nine Oscar Award Nominations

The quite amazing story about how an old, nearly forgotten book becomes a star-casted movie with Oscar potential continues to unfold when Twelve Years a Slave took the Golden Globe for Best Drama, organized by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. 

In the meanwhile, this movie has also received nine Academy Award nominations including best picture, best actor in a leading and supporting role, best actress in a supporting role, and best director. The Oscars will be presented on March 2, 2014.

Read this insightful interview in The Sydney Morning Herald with director Steve McQueen, who moved from Ghana to England, now lives in Amsterdam and was once called by his school teachers not to amount to anything and is now a Oscar contender. McQueen says this in his interview:

"It's no different," McQueen says. "Making a film is like writing a novel – you're telling a story – whereas art is more like poetry: fractured and compressed. It's a bigger process and of course, with film, more people are involved and it may take 10 months to make rather than the moment it takes to make a brushstroke. But when I think about it, it feels the same."


The interview continues:

' Of course the recognition is thrilling; McQueen said he was "exhilarated and ecstatic" about those nine Oscar nominations. But big films – and 12 Years a Slave, for all that it cost barely £10 million ($19 million) and was shot with one camera in 35 days, is a big film – also get picked apart in a big way. For a start, there is the film's brutality. The unwavering stare of McQueen's long takes levelled upon beatings and lynchings has proved too much for some audiences. But how could a film about slavery be anything but painfully violent?

McQueen says he simply followed Northup's book. "Reading it was like revelation after revelation," he says. "Everything is from the memoir; nothing is taken for granted and every behaviour is documented."

That's another objection: that 12 Years a Slave catalogues and condemns the sins of a past era, rather than addressing the muddier and more conflicted sins of the present. McQueen dismisses this with his customary abruptness. "The point is that it is happening now," he says. "I listened to a lady in Kenya who had been in the same circumstances: seduced by a work offer in Dubai, she went there, had her passport taken, was subjected to this terrible ordeal, locked up at night; she escaped in Los Angeles. The past is absolutely about the present for me."

Cosimo is proud to have released the original edition both in a jacketed hard cover and an affordable paperback both with a beautiful cover illustration from the original book. However many Oscars this movie may receive, it doesn't happen often that movie and book are both worth the experience. I wholeheartedly recommend watching the movie and reading the book.

The Cosimo editions are available from many leading online stores, such as Barnes & Noble in hardcover and paperback.

And Amazon - also in hardcover and paperback -: