The Apparitionist by Peter Manseau

Photography was introduced to the United States at around the same time that a new religion was born in the nation. Spiritualism promised a connection to the dead in their realm through human mediums, and some thought photography might capture physical manifestations of spirits. Peter Manseau tells the story of the first spirit photographer in The Apparitionist.

The man who captured the first supposed spirit photograph was an amateur at the time. William Mumler thought he had made in error in cleaning the glass on which the photonegative was captured when a faint image appeared in a self-portrait he shot in 1862. He was using the photo studio owned by Hannah Stuart. The married photographer, soon to be widowed and soon after that to be Mrs. Mumler, was a Spiritualist, and she convinced him that the image was not an error, but an apparition. The photos caught the attention of the Spiritualist press, first in the New York-based Herald of Progress, then in Mumler’s hometown of Boston in the Beacon of Light, which published the address of the Stuart studio.

Soon the studio was producing many spirit photographs; they even took orders by mail from across the country. Bostonian Spiritualists compared photos and found evidence that Mumler was faking the images. Discredited, the Mumler’s moved to New York to quietly offer spirit photographs again. Their practice there let to criminal prosecution in 1869. Photographers knew of ways to produce such images, but no investigators could figure out what Mumler was doing. Though the judge gave did not suggest the photos actually captured images of spirits, he rejected the prosecution’s case because it did not adequately support the charges of fraud and similar crimes.

Even with such tepid vindication, the atmosphere in New York was too hot for the Mumlers, so they returned to Boston. Though Mumler continued to take spirit photos, he had developed a much deeper understanding of the art and science of photography. He developed a process that allowed for the direct reproduction of photos on newsprint; founded the Photo-Electrotype Company of Boston and licensed his process to companies in other cities. This allowed newspapers and magazines to less expensively reproduce images without preparing an engraving first.

Manseau also discussed the development of photography in the United States after the art was introduced here. This includes American pioneers of photography such as Samuel Morse, also inventor of the telegraph, and Civil War battlefield photographers Matthew Brady and Alexander Gardner.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Age of Edison by Ernest Freeburg

Arthur & George by Julian Barnes

Billion Dollar Whale by Tom Wright and Bradley Hope

Buried Alive by Jan Bondeson

Chief Engineer by Erica Wagner

Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes

Enchantress of Numbers by Jennifer Chiaverini

The Explorer King by Robert Wilson

The Man Who Loved Books too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett

The Real World of Sherlock Holmes by Peter Costello

Scan Artist by Marcia Biederman

Super Attractor by Gabrielle Bernstein

Manseau, Peter. The Apparitionists: A Tale of Phantoms, Fraud, Photography, and the Man Who Captured Lincoln’s Ghost. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017.

Rock Breaks Scissors by William Poundstone

People are terrible at producing randomness. We are very bad at recognizing it, too. In his book Rock Breaks Scissors, William Poundstone describes the ways we misunderstand randomness. In addition, he shows how knowledge of this blind spot can help us to make better decisions, or at least help us to avoid being duped by fraudster or our own minds.

The early chapters of the book describe how researchers have come to identify our biases related to randomness perception, even if we do not wholly understand it. Poundstone avoids the textbook psychology and pulls examples from interesting sources such as mass experiments in parapsychology (designed to sell radios) and a machine that beats people at a child’s outguessing game using a simple algorithm.

These experiments reveal two important things about our perceptions for randomness. First, we are almost incapable of intuitively recognizing true randomness and prone to identify as random things that aren’t. In addition, we have all manner of unconscious preferences that show themselves when we try to be random, though we’re unaware of their appearing.

The book takes its title from another child’s outguessing game: rock-paper-scissor. I risk angry comments with this description, because some people take the game very seriously. Serious players have strategies for playing the game. These strategies probably provide little advantage over advanced players, but may give you an edge over ordinary players. My own impromptu experiment seemed to confirm it. (This is another trap we fall into: seeing patterns and drawing conclusions from small data sets that may be random.)

Another way our inability to be random is used is in detecting fraud. We can expect certain sets of number to occur in certain distributions of frequency. For instance, Benford’s law describes the frequency of first digits in numbers. The most common first digit is one, and the frequency declines for each digit to nine (leading zeros are ignored for the first digit). If the distribution of first digits is different, and especially if there are thresholds that may be associated with incentives, then there may be some fudging of the number. In other cases, you might expect the frequency of occurrence to be equal, such as the last two digits of numbers. People will avoid digit pairs that don’t seem random and unconsciously favor certain pairs. An uneven distribution of these pairs could be another sign of fraud. Keep this in mind when you’re preparing your taxes.

The utility of Poundstone’s strategies varies widely. The outcome of rock-paper-scissors means little to most of us (I would not risk something I care greatly about on it). On the other hand, a patient, long-term investor might gain an edge on the market that could amount to a lot of money over time. The chapter for homebuyers might also save you a lot of money by helping you avoid an overpriced market. Use caution, though. Poundstone is pointing out how you might outguess people, because people have trouble with randomness. You’re not going to outguess the lottery because truly random things can’t be outguessed.

William Poundstone also wrote Fortune’s Formula.  If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Chance by Amir Aczel

The Drunkard’s Walk by Leonard Mlodinow

The Numbers Game by Michael Blastland & Andrew Dilnot

Poundstone, William. Rock Breaks Scissors: A Practical Guide to Outguessing and Outwitting Almost Everybody. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2014.

The Explorer King by Robert Wilson

Clarence King was probably the most well-known American scientist of his time. It doesn’t hurt that his scientific reputation was built on exploration of the then still wild west of the United States of that he could spin a tale. Robert Wilson recounts the life of the accomplished geologist in The Explorer King.

King was born in 1842. He was raised in Newport, Massachusetts. He was educated at Yale’s Sheffield Scientific School.

As a young man, King was enamored of art critic John Ruskin. Ruskin thought the rugged Alps of Europe to be the best subject of art for their beauty, colorfulness, ruggedness and variety. When he met western geologists and mountaineers through mentors at Sheffield, he wanted to be part of it.

He headed out for California in 1863 and became part of the state’s geologic survey. He would spend the next decade studying the geology and geography of the American west, especially its mountains. He showed great physical prowess and courage as a mountaineer.

After working on the California survey, he went on to lead surveys. In 1864, he was chosen to lead a survey of Yosemite.

He built on his reputation from the Yosemite survey to lobby Congress to fund a survey of the 40^th Parallel, roughly the route the transcontinental railroads would follow. Though it was under the auspices of the Army Corp of Engineers, it was the first federally-funded scientific endeavor that was completely staffed by civilians. While working on this survey, he was the first to discover active glaciers in the U.S. His team published new methods of silver smelting to make the mines for productive (the survey’s first report dealt with mining in order to show the commercial value of their research to money-conscious Congressmen).

The 40^th Parallel survey made King famous, though not because of the many contributions to science that came from it. King’s team heard rumors of a diamond discovery in Colorado. It would have been very embarrassing for them to have walked over such a valuable mineral resource without observing it. They tracked down the site of the discovery and determined it was a hoax; the site had been planted with rough diamonds and other uncut gemstones that the con men had bought mostly with money from their marks. Stories of massive fraud sells newspapers, especially when the names of big money men in San Francisco and New York are attached to it. King was the hero of the story.

When the U.S. Geological Survey was created, King was appointed to be its first director. His career as a scientist was already on the decline. He would turn his attention to making money in mining, but he would not be successful. He would have no money when he died.

This leads to an interesting point about King, though it is not the focus of Wilson’s biography. King had nothing to leave for his secret family. He was married to a black woman. This was a very unusual thing at the time. To protect his reputation, he kept the marriage a secret. He did not even reveal to his wife his real identity until shortly before he died (she knew him as James Todd). His friend John Hay provided for Ada Copeland Todd (and the five children she had with King) after King died in 1901.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

A Professor, a President, and a Meteor by Cathryn J. Prince

The Fifth Heart by Dan Simmons

Sea of Glory by Nathaniel Philbrick

Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose

Wilson, Robert. The Explorer King: Adventure, Science, and the Great Diamond Hoax—Clarence King in the Old West. New York: Scribner, 2006.

The Man Who Loved Books too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett

Bartlett, Allison Hoover. The Man Who Loved Books too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession. New York: Riverhead, 2009.

I like books. You probably do, too. People like books for different reason. I, and many people I know, love reading. Others enjoy and appreciate books as pieces of history, as art, for associations with their authors or previous owners, as objects with various qualities.

Some people own books because of what the books they own say about them. John Gilkey is such a person. The down side of books is they can be expensive, especially fine are rare books that might burnish the image of their owners. Gilkey had a unique way of overcoming this obstacle. He stole books.


Bartlett seems reluctant to focus on Gilkey. It’s partly because she is reluctant to seem to glorify a criminal or give an outlet to a criminal who is intent on burnishing his image. It’s also because the true story has other interesting participants, especially bookseller Ken Sander who has taken upon himself to track down book thieves. She also seeks to understand the kind of compulsion that goes into collecting, especially when that compulsion drives someone to crime.

It’s a little scary how easily Gilkey accomplished fraud and theft. He took the opportunity to steal a little information, and then picked up the phone to use it to steal books. What is scarier is his capacity for self-justification. Self-justification is a common human activity, but Gilkey has mastered it such a degree that he seems to have almost no conscience. It may be good fortune that his fixation is books and the easy criminal, but not violent, way of acquiring them.

The book is weakest in this last respect. Bartlett didn’t seem to understand the collector’s drive much better at the end of the book than at the beginning. I didn’t. The Man Who Loved Books too Much works as a story about interesting or unusual people.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
The Private Investigator’s Handbook by Chuck Chambers

Billion Dollar Whale by Tom Wright and Bradley Hope

I’m feel stuck in trying to describe Billion Dollar Whale, by Wall Street Journal reporters Tom Wright and Bradley Hope. Part of what boggled my mind is the sheer size of the crime they describe, the theft of an estimated $5 billion dollars. That’s right, billion. The other is the number of corrupt people needed to pull it off. Some were neck deep in the scheme, but a lot of people had to look the other way or squelch concerns in order for this to occur and for it to go on for so long.

 The true story focuses on a man name Jho Low. He grew up in Malaysia. His father made millions in business and sent a young low to be educated in the UK and US (the Wharton school at University of Pennsylvania), where he started making connections at the prestigious schools he attended. While the Lows were wealthy—even in the US, $15 million is a lot of money—he was rubbing elbows with scions of families that controlled orders of magnitude more wealth. He wanted to run in those circles.

 I once read that you can’t con and honest man—traditional cons involved roping a mark into something that is morally dubious if not outright criminal. Low was fortunate to have found many dishonest people who were willing to help him, including the prime minister of Malaysia at the time, Najib Razak, the stepfather of one of Low’s Wharton friends. He also made contacts in the Middle East through Wharton and his British prep school. With the help of Razak and a Saudi ambassador, Low created a Malaysian sovereign fund. Instead of investing the billions of dollars the fund borrowed from investors—with the aid of American banks—Low and his conspirators siphoned of most of the money. He never intended to pay it back.

 Low like to party. This is where the story gets really crazy. His partying led him to contact—and in some cases even friendship—with American celebrities. Low pulled money out of the Malaysian fund to finance the making of the film The Wolf of Wall Street, which is about the huge fraud committed by Jordan Belfort, who was played by Leonardo Dicaprio in the film. (Dicaprio was far from the only celebrity in Low’s circle, and part of the fascination of the book is seeing how he used his access to access these people.) Low’s theft and excesses almost makes Belfort seem like an amateur.

 As the book was published, Low’s scheme had finally collapsed after seven years, though he and some of his conspirators were still at large and had access to at least some of their stolen money in spite of American, Swiss and Singaporean efforts to seize assets of those involved in the scam. It is frustrating to think that he may get away with it. It is also frustrating to realize that billions may never be repaid to investors, the people are Malaysia are stuck with enormous debts that will be a drag on their economy for decades and the truly beneficial investments that might have been made with that money will never occur.

 Wright, Tom & Bradley Hope. Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World. New York: Hachette, 2018.