Anyone who remembers responding with glee to the words 'The circus is in town!' will agree that the show, with its riotous live entertainment, provided 'an adrenaline rush,' as the last owner of Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus once remarked. Unfortunately, veteran author Standiford’s Battle for the Big Top, a readable and meticulous business history of that circus, fails to deliver the same excitement ... A nicely crafted popular history, Battle for the Big Top will appeal to anyone who has ever wondered about the men who gave us the thrill of three-ring circuses.
Historian Standiford (Palm Beach, Mar-a-Lago, and the Rise of America’s Xanadu) delivers a zippy history of Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus ... Standiford packs the account with colorful circus lore, and ably sketches contemporaneous developments, such as the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Readers will relish this entertaining portrait of a bygone American institution.