Alex will be awarding a $20 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour, and a $10 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn host.
The Santa Claus Man: The Rise and Fall of a Jazz Age Con Man and the
Invention of Christmas in New York by Alex Palmer Name
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GENRE: History/True Crime
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BLURB:
Before the charismatic John Duval
Gluck, Jr. came along, letters from New York City children to Santa Claus were
destroyed, unopened, by the U.S. Post Office. Gluck saw an opportunity, and
created the Santa Claus Association. The effort delighted the public, and for
15 years money and gifts flowed to the only group authorized to answer Santa’s
mail. Gluck became a Jazz Age celebrity, rubbing shoulders with the era’s movie
stars and politicians, and even planned to erect a vast Santa Claus monument in
the center of Manhattan — until Gotham’s crusading charity commissioner
discovered some dark secrets in Santa’s workshop.
The rise and fall of the Santa Claus
Association is a caper both heartwarming and hardboiled, involving stolen art,
phony Boy Scouts, a kidnapping, pursuit by the FBI, a Coney Island bullfight,
and above all, the thrills and dangers of a wild imagination. It’s also the
larger story of how Christmas became the extravagant holiday we celebrate
today, from Santa’s early beginnings in New York to the country’s first
citywide Christmas tree and Macy’s first grand holiday parade. The Santa Claus
Man is a holiday tale with a dark underbelly, and an essential read for lovers
of Christmas stories, true crime, and New York City history.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
EXCERPT:
It’s
impossible to say who wrote the first Santa letter, but it was almost certainly
from the mythical saint, not to him.
From
the earliest conception of Santa Claus in the United States, parents used the
voice of St. Nicholas as a means of providing advice and encouraging good
behavior in their children. The earliest reference to a Santa letter in America
that I could find came from Theodore Ledyard Cuyler, recalling his childhood in
1820s Western New York when he “once received an autograph letter from Santa
Claus, full of good counsels.”
Fanny
Longfellow (wife of poet Henry Wadsworth) regularly wrote her children Santa
letters, commenting on their behavior over the preceding year. “I am sorry I
sometimes hear you are not so kind to your little brother as I wish you were,”
she wrote to her son Charley on Christmas Eve 1851.
Soon
enough, children started writing back, generally placing their letters on the
fireplace, where they believed smoke would transport the message to St. Nick.
By
the 1870s, scattered reports appeared of the receipt of Santa letters by local
post offices. But with no actual fur-coated toymaker to receive his mail, each
January, the department destroyed them.
It
was a depressing business. But, officials asked, if mailmen began delivering
Santa’s letters, to which other fictional characters would mail be shuttled?
In
the face of negative publicity, however, New York City’s postmaster finally
relented. Every year, for the entire month of December, any approved
organization could answer Santa’s mail. No one volunteered. Then, in 1913, just
as the Post Office was about to give up, a man named John Duval Gluck stepped
forward. He’d be Santa Claus.
He
was also a con artist.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Alex Palmer is the author of
The Santa Claus Man: The Rise and Fall of a Jazz Age Con Man and the Invention
of Christmas in New York, called "required reading" by the New York
Post and "highly readable" by Publishers Weekly.
Available at:
Amazon.com -
http://www.amazon.com/Santa-Claus-Man-Invention-Christmas/dp/1493008447/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1430324363&sr=1-7
Barnes & Noble -
http://www.amazon.com/Santa-Claus-Man-Invention-Christmas/dp/1493008447/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1430324363&sr=1-7
IndieBound -
http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781493008445
It tells the history of
Christmas in America through the true-crime tale of a Jazz Age hustler who
founded an organization to answer children's Santa letters -- and fuel his own
dark dreams. Palmer curated an exhibit about this Santa Claus Association for
Brooklyn's City Reliquary Museum, earning attention from the Village Voice,
Time Out New York, and inspiring a memorable segment on WNYC (http://wny.cc/1bQIx5k).
The son of two teachers,
Palmer's love of learning and sharing surprising stories behind familiar
subjects has led him to become a secret-history sleuth. In addition to The
Santa Claus Man, he is the author of Weird-o-pedia: The Ultimate Collection of
Surprising, Strange, and Incredibly Bizarre Facts About (Supposedly) Ordinary
Things, published in 2012 by Skyhorse Publishing. it offers up a wealth of
unexpected facts of familiar things. His first book, Literary Miscellany:
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Literature, takes a look at some of
the more colorful aspects of great writers and their works, and was published
in 2010 by Skyhorse.
He is a full-time freelance
journalist whose work has appeared in Slate, Rhapsody, Smithsonian, Vulture,
the New York Daily News, Publishers Weekly, and The Rumpus, among others.
See more at
www.alexpalmerwrites.com and follow him @theAlexPalmer.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE
Alex will be awarding a $20 Amazon or B/N GC to a
randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour, and a $10 Amazon or B/N
GC to a randomly drawn host.
http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/28e4345f1420
Thanks for hosting!
ReplyDeleteWelcome to the Angel's blog. I hope you have a great tour.
ReplyDeleteThanks Christine!
ReplyDeleteSounds like an intriguing book. Hope your tour is successful!
ReplyDelete--Amber Angel
Thanks Genene! It was a fun story to tell
DeleteSounds like a very interesting book!
ReplyDelete