"I was born dead," asserts the first arresting line in The Life and Times of Augustus Rapp. Happily, the child recovered and went on to a lifetime of wandering showmanship in the villages of the middle west and the rural south -- a roving entertainer in quest of an audience. At the grand old age of eighty-nine Rapp gave those of us who care this amusing and curiously readable autobiography, an item of what is called Americana, if I ever saw one. And Guss Rapp was good, says Robert Parrish in his sympathetic introduction; he was "a wonderful magician and a delightful performer." He still is. A wealth of anecdotes and a selection of old portraits and playbills help to make this a uniquely interesting book.
--Vincent Starrett in The Chicago Tribune
