Kaethe

This is a marvelous example of what good history can do: putting bits of things one might (or might not) already know into a useful context.

I've known about the Fox sisters and the rapping they introduced from whence seances and Spiritualism both developed. I knew they were young, that the rapping sound started at night while they were in bed, and that the sounds were eventually credited to knuckle-popping of the toes. Now because of when I first read about them, I pictured them as Laura and Mary Ingalls. What I didn't know is everything else in this book: the background of the family, how an older sister would also have a career as a medium, why their mother took them on the road, how many people in early Spiritualism were also involved in other progressive issues such as women's rights and abolition...just so much.

Weisberg does a marvelous job of sifting through all the documentation, all the newspaper reports and books and diaries and letters for the illuminating quote. Altogether she covers fifty or so years (more time spent on the early, rather than the later), and manages to convey both their lives as celebrities and their personal relationships. It's a weird and fascinating story with some odd addenda, well-told.

Gift copy for Kindle.