Who should read *Bunk* by Kevin Young?

This book is ideal for readers interested in cultural criticism, media literacy, and racial history. Historians, journalists, and students examining post-truth America will find it particularly relevant. Fans of meticulously researched, essay-style narratives that connect historical patterns to modern issues like misinformation will also appreciate Young’s insights.

Is *Bunk* worth reading?

Yes—*Bunk* received acclaim for its timely exploration of hoaxes in a “post-fact” era, earning a National Book Award longlist spot. Critics praise its depth, though some note its dense prose. It’s essential for understanding how American deception intertwines with race and power, offering fresh perspectives on figures from Barnum to Trump.

How does *Bunk* connect hoaxes to race?

Young posits that racial stereotypes are central to American hoaxes, citing examples like Barnum’s display of Joice Heth (falsely claimed as George Washington’s 161-year-old nurse) and Rachel Dolezal’s racial identity theft. These cons exploit racial myths, reinforcing systemic distrust and othering. Race, Young argues, is itself a “hoax” perpetuated to maintain social hierarchies.

What historical figures does *Bunk* analyze?

The book explores P.T. Barnum’s “humbug” spectacles, the fabricated memoir of James Frey, and the forged Native American identities of Grey Owl and Nasdijj. It also dissects Clark Rockefeller’s deadly imposture and the “What Is It?” exhibit, which falsely framed a Black man as a “missing link” in evolution.

How does *Bunk* address modern “fake news”?

Young traces today’s “fake news” to Barnum’s legacy, emphasizing how myths gain traction through spectacle and confirmation bias. He ties Donald Trump’s rhetoric to a tradition where lies thrive by appealing to preconceived notions, particularly racial stereotypes, eroding shared reality.

What are the criticisms of *Bunk*?

Some reviewers find the book overly long and stylistically uneven, mixing academic jargon with colloquial language. While praised for its ambition, critics note that Young’s aphoristic prose can obscure clarity. Nonetheless, its research and relevance outweigh these flaws.

What key quotes define *Bunk*?

Notable lines include Young’s assertion that “fakery is woven from stereotype and suspicion” and his description of race as “a fake thing pretending to be real.” These quotes underscore the book’s thesis that hoaxes exploit societal fractures to distort truth.

Bunk

Q: What is *Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News* about?

*Bunk* by Kevin Young examines America’s long history of deception, linking hoaxes to racial stereotypes and cultural myths. From P.T. Barnum’s exploitative exhibits to modern-day “fake news,” Young argues that fakery is ingrained in American identity, using race as a foundational lie. The book blends historical analysis with cultural criticism, exploring figures like James Frey and Rachel Dolezal to reveal how frauds manipulate truth for power.

The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News

Kevin Young

3.18(1075 Reviews)

Overview of Bunk

In "Bunk," Kevin Young brilliantly dissects America's fake news epidemic, tracing hoaxes from P.T. Barnum to Trump. Longlisted for the National Book Award, this cultural investigation reveals how deception and racial stereotyping intertwine. What dangerous truth about ourselves lies beneath our love of lies?

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Chapter 1

The Anatomy of Deception: How Hoaxes Shape America

Ever wondered why we're so easily fooled? In Kevin Young's "Bunk," he reveals how hoaxes aren't just amusing sideshows but central features of American identity. This New York Times Notable Book exposes the dark underbelly of our fascination with fakery, from P.T. Barnum's human exhibitions to today's "fake news" epidemic. As Pulitzer Prize winner Hilton Als notes, Young's work "changes the way we read American history." The book resonated deeply with readers seeking to understand our "post-truth" era, with Barack Obama including it among his recommended reads. Young, who serves as poetry editor for The New Yorker and director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, masterfully connects historical deceptions to contemporary crises of truth, showing how yesterday's carnival barkers evolved into today's political spin doctors.

Chapter 2

America's Humbug Heritage: Barnum and the Birth of the Hoax

The American love affair with deception began in the 19th century, when P.T. Barnum elevated "humbug" to an art form. Barnum insisted there was a crucial distinction between harmless humbugs that entertained and outright hoaxes that deceived without value. "An honest man who thus arrests public attention will be called a 'humbug,'" Barnum claimed, "but he is not a swindler or an impostor." The key difference? Whether audiences felt they received value for their money, regardless of whether what they saw was genuine. This peculiarly American embrace of entertaining deception allowed the young nation to "marvel at its mysteries, question its hypocrisies, and express contradictions of freedom and slavery." The penny press revolution (the internet of its day) prioritized sensation over substance, court scandals over political reporting. Writers like Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, and Herman Melville incorporated hoaxes and confidence men into their work, recognizing how central deception had become to American identity. The 1835 Moon Hoax perfectly exemplifies this phenomenon. Richard Adams Locke's fabricated "discoveries" of bat-like humanoids and blue unicorns on the lunar surface generated unprecedented popularity, inspiring plays, panoramic exhibitions, and widespread reprints. The hoax succeeded partly because it reflected and reinforced contemporary racial hierarchies, with descriptions of lunar creatures using coded language that evoked stereotypes of Black people-"yellowish flesh," copper-colored hair, and faces compared to orangutans. The lunar civilization conveniently featured subordinate creatures and a "superior race" of lighter-skinned beings, recreating familiar earthly power structures in space. Poe himself had a complex relationship with hoaxes. His own lunar tale "Hans Phaall" appeared weeks before Locke's more successful hoax, leading Poe to claim Locke had stolen his idea-ironic given Poe's own frequent plagiarism in works like "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym." Through his tales of the grotesque and arabesque, Poe helped invent a distinctly American narrative voice that thrived on deception and revelation, permanently shaping our literary landscape and our national relationship with truth itself.

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Chapter 3

Freaks and Fakery: Race and the American Sideshow

The 19th century's most profound hypocrisy was chattel slavery-a "peculiar institution" so contradictory to American ideals that the Constitution could only address it through euphemism. This racial hypocrisy found its cultural expression in the exhibition of Black bodies as "freaks." While Charles Willson Peale's early American museum maintained scientific standards, Barnum's American Museum corrupted scientific terminology to market human beings as curiosities. William Henry Johnson, a Black man with microcephaly, was exhibited as "What Is It?"-supposedly a "missing link" captured in Africa. Advertisements claimed Johnson was found "in a PERFECTLY NUDE STATE" and initially moved "ON ALL FOURS." Barnum co-opted evolutionary theory to suggest its opposite, reinforcing racist hierarchies through pseudoscientific display. Despite this dehumanization, Johnson maintained a remarkably successful career until 1926 as "the dean of freaks," developing agency within his exploitation. His deathbed confession revealed a complex awareness of his role: "Well, we fooled 'em for a long time, didn't we?" The concept of "freaks" underwent profound transformation over time. Once viewed as divine portents or medical marvels, extraordinary bodies became medicalized and pathologized. The term "prodigy," formerly equated with "monster" as signs of God's creation, shifted to mean youthful genius. This secularization paralleled the formalization of museums, which evolved from Barnum-style entertainment venues to repositories of high culture. Even the Bloomsbury intellectual elite participated in racial hoaxing. In 1910, Virginia Woolf and fellow Bloomsbury members executed the famous "Dreadnought hoax," donning fake beards, blackface, and turbans to impersonate the emperor of Abyssinia and his entourage. They successfully boarded Britain's premier battleship, speaking gibberish they claimed was Swahili. This modernist prank revealed the exoticist impulse underlying many hoaxes-the desire to simultaneously appropriate and mock the foreign. Their invented Swahili phrase "Bunga-Bunga" became a popular catchphrase, demonstrating how the language of hoax spreads like contagion through society. Like American blackface minstrelsy, the hoaxers' use of racial disguise served to signal their own identity through contrast. The practice was offensive not just for mocking Black selfhood but for suggesting Black people were merely whites darkened by skin color-a view rooted in pseudoscientific theories that positioned Blackness as a disease or corruption from whiteness.

Chapter 4

Spirits and Spectres: Spiritualism as American Hoax

While Barnum debunked others' hoaxes (even testifying against spirit photography in court), Spiritualism emerged as America's homegrown religion of fakery. Beginning in 1848 with the Fox sisters in western New York, who claimed to communicate with spirits through "rappings," Spiritualism spread rapidly, especially during the Civil War when national grief was at its peak. William Mumler's spirit photography, charging $10 per supernatural portrait, capitalized on this mourning-most famously capturing Mary Todd Lincoln with the "spirits" of her assassinated husband and dead son. These spirit photographs captured America's obsession with "domesticating death" rather than revealing actual spirits. They offered second chances rather than second sight, allowing the living to maintain property rights over the dead. As critic Ann Douglas notes, Spiritualism represented a "retransfer of force from the living to the dead," particularly significant for white Americans seeking to "colonize heaven." Spiritualism offered women unusual religious power as mediums, allowing Americans to commune with their dead and their past. While white mediums focused on communicating with the dead, Black mediums like Harriet Wilson (author of the pioneering novel "Our Nig") found in Spiritualism a form of rebellion against authority and racial hierarchy. The movement's democratic yet elite nature perfectly embodied American paradoxes-accessible to all yet requiring paid mediums, offering women unprecedented religious power while reinforcing racial stereotypes. Even in spirit photographs, race appeared as a spectral presence, with images featuring "white Indians" and racial caricatures. The movement ultimately collapsed when Margaret Fox confessed in 1888 that the sisters had merely been cracking their toes to produce "spirit rappings," though believers like Arthur Conan Doyle continued defending the practice well into the twentieth century. Conan Doyle's belief extended to the Cottingley fairy photographs of 1916-taken by cousins Elsie Wright (16) and Frances Griffiths (10). These images of fairies and a gnome in the English countryside found their champion in Doyle, who published them in the 1920 Christmas issue of Strand magazine. Grieving his son's death in World War I, Doyle desperately wanted to believe in an "invisible world" where anything seen was proof and anything unseen was more proof. The girls' working-class background was interpreted as evidence of their honesty-they were deemed too simple to execute such a sophisticated hoax. Only in 1982 did the cousins finally confess they had merely traced drawings from a children's book.

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Chapter 5

Fabricating History: The Lincoln Hoax and Historical Deception

The fascination with Abraham Lincoln extended far beyond his political legacy into the spiritual and romantic realms, as demonstrated by several notable deceptions in the decades following his death. One early example emerged in Nettie Colburn Maynard's 1891 memoir, where she claimed to have conducted numerous seances for the Lincolns after their son Willie's tragic death in 1862. These sessions allegedly involved detailed communications with the spirit world, reflecting the era's widespread interest in spiritualism among even the most prominent families. This spiritualist connection foreshadowed an even more elaborate hoax that emerged in the 1920s, centered on fabricated love letters between Lincoln and his purported childhood sweetheart, Ann Rutledge. The story touched on Americans' deep desire to understand the personal life of their martyred president, particularly the roots of his famous melancholy. The Rutledge romance had already gained cultural traction through earlier writings, but lacked concrete evidence until Wilma Frances Minor's dramatic entrance. In 1928, Minor approached The Atlantic Monthly with what appeared to be a historical goldmine: a collection of intimate correspondence between Lincoln and Rutledge. She constructed an intricate provenance, claiming the letters had passed through multiple generations of respected families, complete with detailed chains of custody and supporting documentation. The prestigious magazine, led by editor Ellery Sedgwick, saw an opportunity to satisfy the public's insatiable appetite for Lincoln material and eagerly published a series titled "Lincoln, the Lover." The authentication process initially seemed promising, with respected Lincoln scholar Carl Sandburg himself declaring that the letters "chime with all else known of Lincoln." The letters appeared to validate Sandburg's own earlier romantic portrayal of the Lincoln-Rutledge relationship in his popular biography. However, the collection raised numerous red flags that should have prompted closer scrutiny. The sheer volume of materials was suspicious - including not just letters, but also books, diaries, and various memorabilia, an implausibly large archive for a brief frontier romance. Despite mounting evidence of fraud, including anachronistic language and historical inconsistencies, Sedgwick remained "impervious to reason." When finally confronted with irrefutable proof of forgery, Minor and her mother offered a bizarre defense: they claimed to have "channeled" the voices of Lincoln and Rutledge through spiritual means. Minor dramatically declared she "would die on the gallows that the spirits of Ann and Abe were speaking through my Mother," revealing how thoroughly she had embraced her own deception. This elaborate hoax marked a significant evolution from P.T. Barnum's era of obvious showmanship to a more sophisticated form of historical and emotional manipulation. By the early twentieth century, even Barnum's spiritual successor, Robert L. Ripley, had shifted away from crude exploitation, refusing to use the term "freak" in favor of gentler terms like "oddities" or "queeriosities." This linguistic evolution reflected America's growing discomfort with direct confrontation of the unusual, preferring euphemism and indirect expression - a cultural shift that made the public more susceptible to carefully crafted deceptions like the Lincoln-Rutledge letters.

Chapter 6

Going Native: Race and Cultural Appropriation

The modern hoax follows a formulaic ritual resembling the long con rather than short cons like the shell game. Drawing from David W. Maurer's 1940 study "The Big Con," today's hoaxes employ a structure with "ropers" who bring in marks and "inside men" who work them once engaged. The significant innovation was "the store"-semi-permanent displays mimicking legitimate establishments to deceive. Modern con artists convince marks they're beating the system, not just the house, preying on both greed and ambition. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in cases of racial imposture. Grey Owl (born Archibald Belaney) became famous as a "Native" conservationist, writing bestselling books about wilderness preservation while concealing his English origins. His ideas of extinction and "the Wild" were tied up with white stereotypes about Indigenous peoples, stoking the suspicion that Natives are just fake whites. Grey Owl touted conservation as needing "Indianness" to be effective, selling not a cause but a costume. In photographs, to appear more authentically Indian, he scowled. Tim Barrus, who wrote fake memoirs as "Nasdijj" in the early twenty-first century, had previously written gay porn with titles like Mineshaft (1984) and My Brother, My Lover (1985). His porn condemned the gay world as "mad" while simultaneously exploiting it. Later, Barrus reinvented himself as "Nasdijj," an imaginary Navajo, taking pictures, signing books, and accepting prizes-embodying what Leslie Fiedler described as the American pattern of "imaginary Indians" and "imaginary Negroes" that whites pass through before settling into "imaginary whiteness." Nasdijj first gained national attention by writing to Esquire claiming to be Native American and seeking publication of Native voices. His letter accusing the magazine of never publishing American Indian writers led to the publication of his article about his son's death from fetal alcohol syndrome, which became a National Magazine Award finalist and secured him a book deal with Houghton Mifflin. Native writers like Sherman Alexie had warned publishers that Nasdijj was stealing their stories-Alexie's own hydrocephalic birth and seizures had been published in Esquire earlier-but publishers ignored these warnings. The American tradition of "playing Indian" dates back to the Boston Tea Party, as Ralph Ellison noted, with Americans using masks "for good and evil." Even the famous "crying Indian" from the 1971 "Keep America Beautiful" campaign wasn't actually Native, embodying the ad's ironic truth: "People start pollution. People can stop it."

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Chapter 7

Memoir and Deception: The Fabulist's Playground

The contemporary memoir has become a form under siege, with authors including disclaimers about memory's fallibility while still claiming authenticity. These disclaimers create a liar's paradox: "To tell you the truth, I am a liar." While memoir should be "a radically subjective account of events that objectively took place," hoaxers confuse form with genre, mistaking memoir's strengths-hard facts ennobled by memory-as limitations to be ignored. James Frey's A Million Little Pieces exemplifies memoir's descent into "truthiness"-what feels true rather than what is factually accurate. Originally shopped as fiction but marketed as memoir for better sales, Frey's book demonstrated how hoaxers rarely lie just once. Like photography with its "fixing," "dodging," and "touching up," the modern memoir manipulates reality while claiming authenticity. Margaret Seltzer's Love and Consequences, exposed as a hoax shortly after publication, featured a white author pretending to be half-Native, raised by a black foster family in South Central LA. Even the book's cover was a composite image, reinforcing racial stereotypes through a modern "mammy" figure. These fake memoirs traffic in extreme versions of supposed reality because plausibility might cause readers to question their authenticity. Seltzer's fabrication was particularly egregious, borrowing the name "Big Mom" and elements of Native identity from Sherman Alexie's Reservation Blues-revealing how hoaxers often double as plagiarists. Fake memoirists craft characters that perpetuate racial stereotypes while claiming authenticity. Frey's My Friend Leonard begins with an entirely fabricated prison scene featuring "Porterhouse," an unnamed but clearly Black character who embodies racist tropes. Despite never spending significant time in prison, Frey constructs elaborate scenarios where he reads classics like Don Quixote and War and Peace to the illiterate Porterhouse, positioning himself as a white savior. These fake memoirs share DNA with "mondo" films that mixed documentary footage with fiction about "strange places," creating a visual colonialism that equated humans with animals. Frey and Seltzer's works represent late projections of Blaxploitation cinema, appropriating Black language and experience through cliched distortions of vernacular taken not from life but from plantation novels and exploitation films.

Chapter 8

The Literary Hoax: JT LeRoy and the Performance of Identity

JT LeRoy represents perhaps the most elaborate literary hoax of the era-a fictional prodigy created by Laura Albert who supposedly survived abuse, neglect, and prostitution to become a celebrated author. The hoax involved an entire fabricated entourage, with Albert's sister-in-law Savannah Knoop physically portraying LeRoy at events. The ruse captivated celebrities from Madonna to Winona Ryder before being exposed alongside other famous frauds like James Frey in 2006. Albert's creation of LeRoy borrowed from another phenomenon that became epidemic in the 1980s-90s: multiple personality disorder (MPD). Originally a medical rarity, MPD was popularized by bestsellers "The Three Faces of Eve" and especially "Sybil," both featuring female protagonists and made into popular films. The Sybil case, once celebrated in a bestseller that sold over six million copies, has now been revealed as a collaboration between patient, therapist, and writer Flora Rheta Schreiber. All three had financial incentives to maintain the sensational story rather than pursue genuine healing. Multiple personality disorder remained primarily a white woman's affliction in America. The case of "Eve" from segregated Georgia exemplifies how her personalities-Eve White and Eve Black-sublimated racial tensions through coded dichotomies of good/evil and white/black. Eve Black's pronounced southern accent and preference for black rock and roll music like "Sixty Minute Man" were presented as symptoms of her wildness, while her third personality, plain "Jane," suggested a taming of this symbolic jungle. JT LeRoy's work exemplifies this intersection of race melodrama and hoax. From the first page of Sarah (2000), LeRoy deploys racial cliches-the "white Indian" with "patches of brown" skin, poor dialect, and southern gothic tropes. This racial marking attempts to claim authentic southernness through stereotypes that seem profound to literary audiences but are mere gimmicks. Even LeRoy's penis bone totems (baculums) sold to fans represent a commodification of this fabricated identity. Albert's creation of LeRoy wasn't a radical, roomy selfhood but relied on overdetermined ideas of the author as solitary prodigy and doomed genius. When exposed, she became the Evil Stepmother, claiming in court that LeRoy "was my respirator... if you take my JT, I die." Unlike novelist Elena Ferrante, whose pseudonymity avoided fame, Albert violated the fiction pact that "when it lies, it lets us in on that too." The hoax ultimately makes everything unreliable, leaving us unable to know what to believe or trust.

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Chapter 9

Journalistic Fraud and the Post-Factual World

The narrative crisis of the millennium manifested in numerous journalistic hoaxes. The hoax represents bullshit that believes its own bullshit-ignoring truth altogether rather than merely opposing it. This makes it "a greater enemy of the truth than lies are," as philosopher Harry Frankfurt notes. Stephen Glass's fabricated stories for The New Republic reveal the fabulist's dual motive: simultaneously getting away with lies while hinting at being caught. His article titles like "Hack Heaven" and "After the Fall" ironically foreshadowed his downfall. Glass exploited journalism's fact-checking system by fabricating not just stories but sources, creating a feedback loop where unverifiable "facts" came from reporters themselves. Glass's novel "The Fabulist" reads less as confession than evasion, portraying those who exposed him as heartless while positioning himself as repentant victim. Critics noted his fictional characters lacked depth or believability, existing only in relation to the protagonist. The book continues his pattern of non-apology, blaming others while minimizing his actions as mere "mistakes." Glass's fabricated article about Vernon Jordan exemplifies his pattern of racial hoaxing. He portrayed Jordan, a powerful Black attorney, as both a "phantom" whose professional contributions were mysterious and a threatening physical presence with a "six-foot-four, broad-shouldered, thick-necked" frame who "disturbs" and "might not know his own strength." Glass smeared Jordan with fictional accounts of "lecherous behavior" and laziness, employing what he called "dead man's talk"-a term that ironically described Glass's own tactic of attacking someone as if they were dead and unable to defend themselves. Glass's broader significance lies in his "beseeching blandness"-a cultivated banality that made his wild fabrications seem believable. His stories predicted our current "post-factual world" where reality itself has become increasingly "fractional, virtual, unreal." Glass represents a fundamental shift toward viewing writing as mere "content" and people as "consumers" rather than citizens, voters, or contributors to culture. His legacy isn't just about journalistic fraud but about how his fabrications mirrored and anticipated our increasingly fictional existence where even human connections have become virtual and commodified.

Chapter 10

The Age of Euphemism: Our Post-Truth Era

Young meticulously examines how our "Age of Euphemism" has evolved into a post-factual era where the very nature of proof and evidence has fundamentally eroded. He traces this deterioration through multiple domains, from scientific discourse to political rhetoric, showing how the modern hoax has deep roots in pseudoscience and eugenicism. These historical movements created elaborate hierarchies and developed what Young terms "English-ish" language - sophisticated-sounding but ultimately hollow terminology that substitutes for genuine insight and empirical evidence. The author draws fascinating parallels between contemporary phenomena like cloning and historical freak show attractions, noting how both tap into fundamental human anxieties about identity and authenticity. The clone, in particular, represents a complex duality in modern consciousness - simultaneously embodying dreams of immortality and highlighting a crisis in creativity and originality. This tension between authenticity and reproduction becomes a central theme in understanding modern deceptions. Young positions Donald Trump as the contemporary inheritor of P.T. Barnum's legacy, but with crucial differences. While both are showmen who masterfully understand media dynamics, Barnum ultimately delivered tangible entertainment. Trump, in contrast, deals primarily in phantoms and "alternative facts," creating spectacles without substance. Young particularly emphasizes Trump's sophisticated manipulation of social media and news cycles, planting false stories that exploit existing social divisions and biases. The author notes the powerful symbolic timing of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus closing just days before Trump's inauguration - a poignant illustration of how the sideshow has moved from the margins to become the main event in American political life. The book provides extensive analysis of how euphemism operates as a tool of deception, doing "nefarious work by seeming innocent." Young examines this particularly in real estate language ("cozy" for tiny, "up-and-coming" for dangerous) and racial discourse, where coded language masks discriminatory intent. He argues convincingly that "the hoax is racism's native tongue," demonstrating how Trump's rhetoric invokes the same persistent fictions that nineteenth-century pseudoscience produced about racial hierarchies and differences. Young distinguishes between simple lying and what philosopher Harry Frankfurt termed "bullshitting" - where the relationship to truth becomes irrelevant, and facts don't matter at all. This distinction helps explain the particular danger of our current moment, where expertise is not merely challenged but actively devalued. The author observes that the most effective modern hoaxes often come disguised as hoax exposures themselves, creating a recursive loop of distrust and skepticism. The book concludes with a sobering assessment of our "half-hoax world" that threatens to become a "complete-hoax one." Rather than offering false comfort, Young suggests viewing truth as a skill - like a muscle that can atrophy or be strengthened through practice. He expresses cautious hope that while facts remain fundamentally on our side, we might learn to better harness the power of narrative and storytelling - the very tools often used against truth - in service of reality rather than deception.

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Key Themes in Bunk

racial pseudoscience
cultural history of hoaxes
american sideshow culture
post-truth era origins
blackface and minstrelsy

Quotes from Bunk

Young's work "changes the way we read American history."
Barnum elevated "humbug" to an art form.
"Well, we fooled 'em for a long time, didn't we?"
The language of hoax spreads like contagion through society.
Spiritualism represented a "retransfer of force from the living to the dead"

Characters in Bunk

Kevin YoungAuthor, poet, and director of the Schomburg Center
P.T. BarnumShowman who elevated the humbug to an art form
William Henry JohnsonBlack man exhibited as the 'What Is It?' curiosity
Edgar Allan PoeWriter who incorporated hoaxes into his literature

About the Author

Kevin Young is the acclaimed poet and cultural critic behind Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News, a groundbreaking exploration of deception in American culture.

As the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and former director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Young brings scholarly rigor to his examination of historical and modern hoaxes. His expertise spans poetry and prose, with works like Jelly Roll: A Blues (National Book Award finalist) and Book of Hours (Lenore Marshall Prize winner) establishing him as a leading voice in contemporary literature.

Young, who serves as poetry editor of The New Yorker, blends archival research with sharp cultural analysis in Bunk, which won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was named a New York Times Notable Book. A Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, his anthology African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song further cements his authority on narrative and truth.

Bunk has been celebrated as one of 2017’s best books by The Atlantic and NPR, reflecting its enduring relevance in debates about misinformation.

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@Matt, YC alum

108

"Reading used to feel like a chore. Now it’s just part of my lifestyle."

@Erin, Investment Banking Associate , NYC

254

"Feels effortless compared to reading. I’ve finished 6 books this month already."

@djmikemoore

"BeFreed turned my guilty doomscrolling into something that feels productive and inspiring."

@Pitiful

4.5K

"BeFreed turned my commute into learning time. 20-min podcasts are perfect for finishing books I never had time for."

@SofiaP

"BeFreed replaced my podcast queue. Imagine Spotify for books — that’s it. 🙌"

@Jaded_Falcon

201

"It is great for me to learn something from the book without reading it."

@OojasSalunke

"The themed book list podcasts help me connect ideas across authors—like a guided audio journey."

@Leo, Law Student, UPenn

483

"Makes me feel smarter every time before going to work"

@Cashflowbubu

"Instead of endless scrolling, I just hit play on BeFreed. It saves me so much time."

@Moemenn

"I never knew where to start with nonfiction—BeFreed’s book lists turned into podcasts gave me a clear path."

@Chloe, Solo founder, LA

117

"Perfect balance between learning and entertainment. Finished ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ on my commute this week."

@Raaaaaachelw

"Crazy how much I learned while walking the dog. BeFreed = small habits → big gains."

@Matt, YC alum

108

"Reading used to feel like a chore. Now it’s just part of my lifestyle."

@Erin, Investment Banking Associate , NYC

254

"Feels effortless compared to reading. I’ve finished 6 books this month already."

@djmikemoore

"BeFreed turned my guilty doomscrolling into something that feels productive and inspiring."

@Pitiful

4.5K

"BeFreed turned my commute into learning time. 20-min podcasts are perfect for finishing books I never had time for."

@SofiaP

"BeFreed replaced my podcast queue. Imagine Spotify for books — that’s it. 🙌"

@Jaded_Falcon

201

"It is great for me to learn something from the book without reading it."

@OojasSalunke

"The themed book list podcasts help me connect ideas across authors—like a guided audio journey."

@Leo, Law Student, UPenn

483

"Makes me feel smarter every time before going to work"

@Cashflowbubu

"Instead of endless scrolling, I just hit play on BeFreed. It saves me so much time."

@Moemenn

"I never knew where to start with nonfiction—BeFreed’s book lists turned into podcasts gave me a clear path."

@Chloe, Solo founder, LA

117

"Perfect balance between learning and entertainment. Finished ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ on my commute this week."

@Raaaaaachelw

"Crazy how much I learned while walking the dog. BeFreed = small habits → big gains."

@Matt, YC alum

108

"Reading used to feel like a chore. Now it’s just part of my lifestyle."

@Erin, Investment Banking Associate , NYC

254

"Feels effortless compared to reading. I’ve finished 6 books this month already."

@djmikemoore

"BeFreed turned my guilty doomscrolling into something that feels productive and inspiring."

@Pitiful

4.5K

"BeFreed turned my commute into learning time. 20-min podcasts are perfect for finishing books I never had time for."

@SofiaP

"BeFreed replaced my podcast queue. Imagine Spotify for books — that’s it. 🙌"

@Jaded_Falcon

201

"It is great for me to learn something from the book without reading it."

@OojasSalunke

"The themed book list podcasts help me connect ideas across authors—like a guided audio journey."

@Leo, Law Student, UPenn

483

"Makes me feel smarter every time before going to work"

@Cashflowbubu

See more on how BeFreed is discussed

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Chapter 5

Bunk

OverviewOverview of Bunk

One book. Many ways to hear it.

The Anatomy of Deception: How Hoaxes Shape America

America's Humbug Heritage: Barnum and the Birth of the Hoax

See every word as you hear it

Freaks and Fakery: Race and the American Sideshow

Spirits and Spectres: Spiritualism as American Hoax

Get more out of Bunk

Fabricating History: The Lincoln Hoax and Historical Deception

Going Native: Race and Cultural Appropriation

See every word as you hear it

Memoir and Deception: The Fabulist's Playground

The Literary Hoax: JT LeRoy and the Performance of Identity

Get more out of Bunk

Journalistic Fraud and the Post-Factual World

The Age of Euphemism: Our Post-Truth Era

You made it to the end of Bunk

Key Themes in Bunk

Quotes from Bunk

Characters in Bunk

About the Author

Download Summary of Bunk

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FAQs About This Book

What is Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News about?

Who should read Bunk by Kevin Young?

Is Bunk worth reading?

How does Bunk connect hoaxes to race?

Part of a Learning Plan

Oliver sacks and Alex boese

Discover more

1,000,000+ curious minds.

1,000,000+ curious minds.

One book. Many ways to hear it.

The Anatomy of Deception: How Hoaxes Shape America

America's Humbug Heritage: Barnum and the Birth of the Hoax

See every word as you hear it

Freaks and Fakery: Race and the American Sideshow

Spirits and Spectres: Spiritualism as American Hoax

Get more out of Bunk

Fabricating History: The Lincoln Hoax and Historical Deception

Going Native: Race and Cultural Appropriation

See every word as you hear it

Memoir and Deception: The Fabulist's Playground

The Literary Hoax: JT LeRoy and the Performance of Identity

Get more out of Bunk

Journalistic Fraud and the Post-Factual World

The Age of Euphemism: Our Post-Truth Era

You made it to the end of Bunk

Users also liked

Part of a Learning Plan

Oliver sacks and Alex boese

Discover more

Overview of Bunk