Empire of Skulls: Phrenology, the Fowler Family, and a New Nation's Quest to Unlock the Secrets of the Mind - Hardcover

by Paul Stob (Author)

An absorbing tale of science and showmanship, ideology and enterprise, that provides not just a fascinating history of our country, but also crucial insight into the deep currents that continue to propel modern life

During the contentious and progressive antebellum era, the Fowler family preached a gospel of self-improvement to a nation eager to embrace its foundational beliefs. For the first time, this new "science" of phrenology offered all Americans the ability to improve their station by unlocking their innate mental and emotional truths. Revered politicians, quirky celebrities, infamous criminals, and social outcasts all found their way to the Fowlers for skull readings.

Brimming with the energy to change the world, the Fowlers connected phrenology to practically every aspect of life in the young nation--from abolition to women's rights, temperance to prison reform, spiritualism and mesmerism to vegetarianism and sexual education. But there was a dark side to this fad and to the Fowlers, and soon nefarious forces co-opted this once-hopeful sensation to justify racism and xenophobia.

Phrenology's complex history stands as a commentary on the dreams and follies of the American republic. Though phrenology (and the Fowlers) ran afoul of the tide of history, its aspirational insistence on an individual's ability to improve oneself became embedded in the fabric of the nation.

Author Biography

PAUL STOB is Director of the Program in American Studies at Vanderbilt University, where he also teaches in the Department of Communication Studies and the Program in the Communication of Science and Technology. His research and teaching focus on American intellectual culture in the nineteenth century, with an emphasis on the connection between reading, writing, and lecturing as well as religion, democracy, populism, and social movements. He is co-author (with Stephen Lucas) of The Art of Public Speaking (McGraw-Hill), which is now in its fourteenth edition and sells well over 100K copies a year in various print and electronic editions. Empire of Skulls is his first trade book.