Memoirs of a Sword Swallower

Biography. Popular Culture. America's leading fire-eater recounts his life as a carny. Includes 58 photos from Mannix's private archive. A sympathetic and funny account of life with a carnival by a young man who impulsively joined up with one, mastered the elements of fire-eating and sword-swallowing in record time, and then rose, Horatio Alger-like, into the rarified company of neon-bulb swallowers...it's engrossing. -- The New Yorker.