The stand-up pundit

An early American orator who could only put it over for so long

I don’t usually go in for academic books, but I saw an ad for The Strange Genius of Mr. O: The World of the United States’ First Forgotten Celebrity (University of North Carolina Press) and it hooked me. Author Carolyn Eastman does follow through the theme promised by the subtitle, arguing admirably from such scraps of documentation as exist that James …