The Sun and the Moon

Book excerpt: On August 26, 1835, a fledgling newspaper called theSunbrought to New York the first accounts of remarkable lunar discoveries. A series of six articles reported the existence of life on the moon—including unicorns, beavers that walked on their hind legs, and four-foot-tall flying man-bats. In a matter of weeks it was the most broadly circulated newspaper story of the era, and theSun, a working-class upstart, became the most widely read paper in the world.An exhilarating narrative history of a divided city on the cusp of greatness, and tale of a crew of writers, editors, and charlatans who stumbled on a new kind of journalism,The Sun and the Moontells the surprisingly true story of the penny papers that made America a nation of newspaper readers.