{"product_id":"credulity-emily-ogden-9780226532332","title":"Credulity: A Cultural History of Us Mesmerism","description":"From the 1830s to the Civil War, Americans could be found putting each other into trances for fun and profit in parlors, on stage, and in medical consulting rooms. They were performing mesmerism. Surprisingly central to literature and culture of the period, mesmerism embraced a variety of phenomena, including mind control, spirit travel, and clairvoyance. Although it had been debunked by Benjamin Franklin in late eighteenth-century France, the practice nonetheless enjoyed a decades-long resurgence in the United States. Emily Ogden here offers the first comprehensive account of those boom years. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eCredulity \u003c\/i\u003etells the fascinating story of mesmerism's spread from the plantations of the French Antilles to the textile factory cities of 1830s New England. As it proliferated along the Eastern seaboard, this occult movement attracted attention from Ralph Waldo Emerson's circle and ignited the nineteenth-century equivalent of flame wars in the major newspapers. But mesmerism was not simply the last gasp of magic in modern times. Far from being magicians themselves, mesmerists claimed to provide the first rational means of manipulating the credulous human tendencies that had underwritten past superstitions. Now, rather than propping up the powers of oracles and false gods, these tendencies served modern ends such as labor supervision, education, and mediated communication. Neither an atavistic throwback nor a radical alternative, mesmerism was part and parcel of the modern. \u003ci\u003eCredulity\u003c\/i\u003e offers us a new way of understanding the place of enchantment in secularizing America.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Emily Ogden\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 022653233X\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780226532332\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Chicago Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 03\/30\/2018\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 272\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.85lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.00h x 5.90w x 0.80d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eChoice\u003c\/i\u003e 01\/01\/2019","brand":"Emily Ogden","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":43981509984511,"sku":"9780226532332","price":30.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_15e6a661-2899-4560-9856-68a89ffc2f03.jpg?v=1683256005","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/credulity-emily-ogden-9780226532332","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}