The research that Joe Nickell did for this book is exhaustive and impressive, and the images within the book are fantastic - and there are lots of them.

That said: I was really disappointed by the book's lack of depth. Maybe it's because (ok, not maybe) I have somewhat academic inclinations, but I felt really frustrated by the lack of analysis in this book. It was basically a prose-y list of sideshow acts over the years, and the years are often all tangled together, with mentions of acts that happened in the late nineteenth century and mid-twentieth century right next to each to each other. There's no analysis of how these acts mean and how that meaning may have changed over the last 150 years or so. There's no analysis of the dynamics of race, gender, class, ability, and otherness - analysis which I would've really loved to see because there's such an incredible cast of characters that quickly parade through the book, and Nickell obviously knows a whole hell of a lot about sideshows.

Instead of Secrets of the Sideshow, I recommend
[b:Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit|8974|Freak Show Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit|Robert Bogdan|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165847255s/8974.jpg|11869] if you're looking for cultural history and [b:Geek Love|13872|Geek Love A Novel|Katherine Dunn|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41ZCMK1PTVL._SL75_.jpg|1474375] if you're looking for great fiction. Both are well-written and have much more depth to them.