Big Top Boss

This first balanced picture of circus king John Ringling North explored the remarkable career of the man who ran Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Baily for thirty years. David Lewis Hammarstrom details how North guided the circus through adversities ranging from depressions and wars to crippling labor strikes and rapidly changing trends in American entertainment. Hammarstrom interviewed a host of circus figures including North himself; his formers, directors, and department heads who were involved with the circus when North owned and operated it.

Once an eagerly awaited spectacle, the traveling circus—that miracle of red wagons, trumpeting elephants and spangled trapeze artists that slipped into town at dawn and disappeared by midnight—has all but vanished from the American landscape. This work explores circus history from 1793 to the present and addresses the forces of modern culture (such as the popularity of Cirque du Soleil, and pressure from the animal rights movement) that are pushing big top shows toward what the author calls “circus ballet.” Numerous photographs and in-depth interviews conducted with show owners, performers and directors enrich the narrative. Overall, the book reveals a sobering contrast between circuses of yesterday and today, even as it honors the outstanding performers who created, and have sustained, the enduring appeal of the circus.

"The first-ever biography of Art Concello, one of the world's greatest trapeze artists and circus businessmen, this book goes beyond the showmanship displayed in the ring to reveal the inner workings of the circus that could both thrill a crowd and make incredible money"--

Tents for good and move the circus indoors. It also shows that North's circus was not artistically run down and losing money when he sold it in 1967 but in fact had been reestablished as a profitable enterprise that earned first-rate critical notices and was attracting larger crowds each year. Hammarstrom has interviewed a host of key circus figures including North himself; his brother, Henry; his famous general manager, Arthur M. Concello; and many performers.

Dalton Young—ringmaster of the financially strapped Second Galaxy Circus—has a lot on his spinning plates. Broken equipment, injured performers, and investors breathing down his neck threaten to crater everything he’s built. Still, he continues to do it all on his own. Partnerships, after all, always end with someone broke or broken. And he should know—ten years ago, the love of his life never boarded the bus heading toward their mutual dream of performing in the circus. Penelope Baker—a tame, methodical accountant for a prestigious investment firm—made the mistake of admitting she almost ran off with the circus in her youth, and now her boss has assigned her the bothersome task of auditing their riskiest investment: The Second Galaxy Circus. Taking the job will only remind her of the chaotic road she almost traveled. She decides to do the work as quickly and efficiently as possible so she can get back to her stable and routine life. Things unravel the moment Dalton and Penelope come face to face with each other and their connected past. She was the girl who never showed, and he was the boy left waiting. Yet, just like the name of his circus, maybe they have a second chance at love under a big top. Book two in The Unwedding Vow: Having just attended a wedding with the queen of all bridezillas, the ten unmarried members of wedding reception table nine have taken an oath. They will never, ever get married. Can this collection of oddball personalities keep their promise to be single? Or will love pick off each member of The Unwedding Vow?

International Literacy Association Award Winner for Intermediate Nonfiction 2016 Eureka Children's Book Honor 2016 On July 6, 1944, thousands of fans made their way to Barbour Street in Hartford, Connecticut, to see the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus performance. Not long after the show's start, a fire broke out and spread rapidly as panicked circus-goers pushed and scrambled to escape. Within 10 minutes the entire big top had burned to the ground, and 167 people never went home. Big Top Burning recounts the true story of one of the worst fire disasters in US history. It follows the tragic stories of the Cook family—including children Donald, Eleanor, and Edward, who were in the audience that day—and 15-year-old Robert Segee, a circus employee with an incendiary past. Drawing on primary sources and interviews with survivors, author Laura Woollett guides readers through several decades of investigations and asks, Wasthe unidentified body of a little girl nicknamed"Little Miss 1565" Eleanor Cook?Was the fire itself an act of arson—anddid Robert Segee set it? Young readers are invited to evaluate the evidence and draw their own conclusions. Combining a gripping disaster story, an ongoing detective and forensics saga, and vivid details about life in World War II–era America, Big Top Burning is sure to intrigue any history or real-life mystery fan.

For many people, the circus, with its clowns, exotic beasts, and other colorful iconography, is lighthearted entertainment. Yet for Greg Renoff and other scholars, the circus and its social context also provide a richly suggestive repository of changing attitudes about race, class, religion, and consumerism. In the South during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, traveling circuses fostered social spaces where people of all classes and colors could grapple with the region’s upheavals. The Big Tent relates the circus experience from the perspectives of its diverse audiences, telling what locals might have seen and done while the show was in town. Renoff digs deeper, too. He points out, for instance, that the performances of these itinerant outfits in Jim Crow-era Georgia allowed boisterous, unrestrained interaction between blacks and whites on show lots and on city streets on Circus Day. Renoff also looks at encounters between southerners and the largely northern population of circus owners, promoters, and performers, who were frequently accused of inciting public disorder and purveying lowbrow prurience, in part due to residual anger over the Civil War. By recasting itself as a showcase of athleticism, equestrian skill, and God’s wondrous animal creations, the circus appeased community leaders, many of whose businesses prospered during circus visits. Ranging across a changing social, cultural, and economic landscape, The Big Tent tells a new history of what happened when the circus came to town, from the time it traveled by wagon and river barge through its heyday during the railroad era and into its initial decline in the age of the automobile and mass consumerism.

A century ago, daily life ground to a halt when the circus rolled into town. Across America, banks closed, schools canceled classes, farmers left their fields, and factories shut down so that everyone could go to the show. In this entertaining and provocative book, Janet Davis links the flowering of the early-twentieth-century American railroad circus to such broader historical developments as the rise of big business, the breakdown of separate spheres for men and women, and the genesis of the United States' overseas empire. In the process, she casts the circus as a powerful force in consolidating the nation's identity as a modern industrial society and world power. Davis explores the multiple "shows" that took place under the big top, from scripted performances to exhibitions of laborers assembling and tearing down tents to impromptu spectacles of audiences brawling, acrobats falling, and animals rampaging. Turning Victorian notions of gender, race, and nationhood topsy-turvy, the circus brought its vision of a rapidly changing world to spectators--rural as well as urban--across the nation. Even today, Davis contends, the influence of the circus continues to resonate in popular representations of gender, race, and the wider world.