A review by dmturner
Battle for the Big Top: P.T. Barnum, James Bailey, John Ringling and the Death-Defying Saga of the American Circus by Les Standiford

4.0

An exuberantly written account of the men who ran every manner of circus in the United States. It conveys an image of a time very different from ours, in which the arrival of the circus was an apparition from an alien world. The proprietors of those spectacles were remarkable oddities who seemed to flourish in conditions of danger, uncertainty, and thousands of moving parts.

I remember seeing the tiny Cole Brothers Circus when it was near my home, so I suppose I have one tie to that past.