My highlights from the book:

1. Barnum is a representative man. He represents the enterprise and energy of his countrymen in the nineteenth century, as Washington represented their resistance to oppression in the century preceding.

2. Even as a young man he had an unfailing sense of what the public wanted, yet he could be brazenly manipulative and unafraid of controversy.

3. He is known today primarily for his connection to the circus, but that came only in the last quarter of his long life.

4. Less well known today is that he was also a best-selling author, an inspirational lecturer, a real estate developer, a builder, a banker, a state legislator, and the mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut.

5. In all of these endeavors, he was a promoter without peer, a relentless advertiser, and an unfailingly imaginative concoctor of events to draw the interest of potential patrons.

6. He had become as close to a global celebrity as a person could be at the time.

7. Through hard work, a lot of brass, and a genius for exploiting the new technologies related to communication and transportation, he became world-famous and wealthy beyond his dreams.

8. He led a rich, event-filled, exhilarating life, one indeed characterized by both struggles and triumphs. His life is well worth knowing and celebrating.

9. What did interest him from an early age was money and its accumulation.

10. Barnum soon decided to start a business of his own. “My disposition is, and ever was, of a speculative character.” He knew that he would only be happy working for himself.

11. Like most persons who engage in a business which they do not understand, we were unsuccessful in the enterprise.

12. It also began to develop his insight into the complicated nature of his customers, a realization that outwardly respectable people might have interests that were not entirely respectable.

13. Seemingly small but consequential details would never elude him.

14. He now had “no pecuniary resources.” He blamed himself for his situation, writing that “the old proverb, ‘Easy come, easy go,’ was too true in my case.” Still, he was confident in his ability to earn money.

15. [The day he became a showman. He starts a newspaper, gets sued for libel, goes to jail, and organizes a parade on the day he is released]: His ability to marshal not just his own paper but also the goodwill of others was a harbinger of things to come.  It was the first example of his flair for drawing attention to his beliefs, his enterprises, and himself.

16. I fell into the occupation, and far beyond any of my predecessors on this continent, I have succeeded.

17. He struggled to find further success in the years that followed. Barnum would spend much of the five years after on the road with various acts, ranging from dancers to a small circus. “I was thoroughly disgusted with the life of an itinerant showman.”

18. After barely getting by with these activities Barnum later wrote, “I began to realize, seriously, that I was at the very bottom of fortune’s ladder, and that I had now arrived at an age when [31] when it was necessary to make one grand effort to raise myself about want.”

19. In one of the most famous passages from his autobiography, Barnum told a friend that he was hoping to buy the American Museum. When the incredulous friend asked what with, Barnum replied, “Brass, for silver and gold I have none.” It’s a memorable line, and it’s mostly true.

20. He decided to seek out the merchant who owned the building in which the museum was housed, with the quixotic goal of persuading him to buy the collection for him on credit, arguing that he would be a more reliable tenant than the struggling Scudder family. This, against all odds, Barnum was able to do.

21. He wrote that his purpose in displaying the mermaid had been “mainly to advertise the regular business of the Museum and this was effective indirect advertising. As the exhibit subsequently traveled the country, “the fame of the Museum wafted from one end of the land to the other,” and he knew that every dollar he sowed on advertising it “would return in tens, perhaps hundreds, in a future harvest.”

22. He now felt confident in his success and believed that his business “had long ceased to be an experiment” and was now in “perfect running order.”

23. Like any evangelist, and true to his industrious nature, he was now full of the spirit and could not stop spreading it.

24. Barnum had been working at a dizzying number of ventures. When those projects relied on his instincts and experience as a showman, they tended to be successful. But when he was tempted by schemes in areas where he was less familiar, the results were uneven. Eventually, his luck would come to an end.

25. He became increasingly eager to leverage his wealth in new speculations, but he became increasingly careless about how he did so. Once involved, he was lax about keeping tabs on his investments.

26. His financial situation was so complicated that he was forced to file for bankruptcy. His bankruptcy was a complete shock.

27. He added that he was “once more nearly at the bottom of the ladder.”

28. Barnum’s financial misfortune inspired the glee of those who had long despised what he stood for, as well as those who no longer felt the economic need to pretend to be his friend. It also became a morality tale of a man brought down by his vanity.

29. Many people proposed to lend or give him money to get back on his feet. A letter signed by more than a thousand New Yorkers, among them Cornelius Vanderbilt, appeared in New York papers expressing support and proposing benefits on his behalf.

30. Barnum declined these many outpourings of financial support, publicly stating, “While favored with health, I feel competent to earn an honest livelihood for myself and family.”

31. He was and had every right to be, proud of the things he had accomplished largely on his own, and that pride and the self-confidence that went with it were not likely to evaporate even in this moment of distress.

32. He acknowledged that “business activity is a necessity of my nature” and emphasized that. on the cusp of fifty years of age, he had no desire to retire. His natural inclination for business would never leave him, and given his genius for it, he would continue to accumulate dollars.

33. It’s tempting to see this burst of energy as the beginning of Barnum’s second career, the one he is more famous for today, as a circus man rather than as a showman. But these activities were continuous with those he had been pursuing for more than three decades.

34. Retirement, he now realized, at the ripe old age of sixty, was not for him.

35. Samuel Clemens [Mark Twain] began an after-dinner habit of reading from Barnum’s Struggles and Triumphs. The book made an impression on Clemens, encouraging him in the years ahead as he promoted himself as the public lecturer and writer Mark Twain. Barnum’s autobiography meant so much to him that when Clemens felt death nearing and “took a dying man’s solace in rereading his favorite books,” Barnum’s autobiography was one of them.

36. Barnum was also impressed by how well the three younger men had turned the tables on him, using his own methods. “Foes worthy of my steel,” he called them.

37. The aging showman realized he had finally met his match, and he concluded it would be wiser to join them than to continue competing with them.

38. Barnum rested at last, but the spectacle he had created would, decade after decade, continue to bear his name and delight millions who would see it.

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