Includes bibliographical references and index.

"On Wednesday, August 26, 1835, a fledgling newspaper called the Sun brought to New York the first accounts of remarkable lunar discoveries. A series of six articles purported to reveal the existence of life on the moon - including unicorns, beavers that walked upright on their hind legs, and, strangest of all, four-foot-tall flying man-bats. In a matter of weeks the series became the most widely circulated newspaper story of the era, and the Sun, a brash working-class upstart less than two years old, had become the most widely read newspaper in the world." "In The Sun and the Moon, journalist and historian Matthew Goodman chronicles the hot summer of 1835, when the Sun's editor convinced the citizens of New York that the moon was inhabited." "Told in richly novelistic detail, The Sun and the Moon brings the raucous world of 1830s New York City vividly to life - the noise, the excitement, the sense that almost anything was possible. Evoking a seminal, chaotic period in the city's history, the book overflows with larger-than-life characters, including Richard Adams Locke, author of the moon series; a fledgling showman named P. T. Barnum, who had just brought his own hoax to New York; and the young writer Edgar Allan Poe, who was convinced that the moon series was a plagiarism of his own work."