I got this fair-condition softcover at a local Savers thrift shop. I've enjoyed Finney's time-travel fiction (and other works), but this is non-fiction: seems he dug into old newspaper archives to find stories that were huge in their day but have since been forgotten.

His descriptions of how he got sidetracked while researching a specific subject (1890s New York City, for use in his wonderful time-travel novel Time And Again) amused me very much - that kind of thing happens to me all the time, though seldom to quite the lengths that he went to!

Among the news stories he dug up for this book: the story that takes up most of the volume, the at-the-time notorious 1857 murder of a dentist named Burdell, for which a young widow who'd been having an affair with him was tried amid massive publicity; tidbits such as alleged cannibalism in the South Seas; and some truly bizarre items presented to various US presidents, including the "bear chair," which - if the illustration is accurate - is a mind-bendingly ugly creation using the actual bear's arms as the chair-arms, and its head sticking out below such that those brave enough to sit in the chair had to swing their legs to one side to avoid the gaping jaws!

There's also a chapter on the sinking of the steamship Central America in 1857, a massive disaster in its day, though I hadn't heard of it before; on the strength of this book I found a copy of Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea, all about that wreck.

I left this book on a bench in the entrance to the diner while stopping by for some of their delicious eggs benedict. Hope the finder enjoys the book!

[See other recent releases in MA here.]

*** Released for the 2018 Allergic to A release challenge. ***