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A review by filemanager
Battle for the Big Top: P.T. Barnum, James Bailey, John Ringling and the Death-Defying Saga of the American Circus by Les Standiford
Did not finish book.
DNF @ 21% - I had to abandon this book at 21% and here is why. First of all, there was a lot of circus history, which was awesome. BUT the big things for me were:
1) I'm 1/5th of the way in, and the three big names have barely been mentioned. I just finished reading about James Bailey, but there were only mere mentions of P.T. Barnum and John Ringling so far.
2) The very clinical and monotone writing style just didn't keep my interest.
3) There's a lot of USA-specific history, and I'm Canadian so I just don't care much about US history.
4) This book wasn't what I thought it would be, it was a lot of history and facts, and I thought it would be more about Barnum, Bailey and Ringling, and how they were competing in the circus industry. It's of course important to know the history of it all, but I'm just not a history buff and I'd much rather have gotten a quick introduction to how the concept of a circus got started, how they travelled, things they endured, then move right into the 3 main "Ringmasters" and more stuff about them.
I did find the history about the animals, and how the circuses had to travel, and how they setup interesting, so I may come back to this in the future and try to continue it.
1) I'm 1/5th of the way in, and the three big names have barely been mentioned. I just finished reading about James Bailey, but there were only mere mentions of P.T. Barnum and John Ringling so far.
2) The very clinical and monotone writing style just didn't keep my interest.
3) There's a lot of USA-specific history, and I'm Canadian so I just don't care much about US history.
4) This book wasn't what I thought it would be, it was a lot of history and facts, and I thought it would be more about Barnum, Bailey and Ringling, and how they were competing in the circus industry. It's of course important to know the history of it all, but I'm just not a history buff and I'd much rather have gotten a quick introduction to how the concept of a circus got started, how they travelled, things they endured, then move right into the 3 main "Ringmasters" and more stuff about them.
I did find the history about the animals, and how the circuses had to travel, and how they setup interesting, so I may come back to this in the future and try to continue it.