Ringlingville USA: The Stupendous Story of Seven Siblings and Their Stunning Circus Success - Softcover

Apps, Jerry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 087020355X ISBN 13: 9780870203558

Publisher: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2005

Synopsis

The Ringling Brothers began their business under the most modest of circumstances and through hard work, business savvy, and some luck created the largest, most famous circus in the world. They became wealthy men, one 50 cent admission ticket at a time.

Ringlingville USA chronicles the brothers' journey from immigrant poverty to enduring glory as the kings of the circus world. The Ringlings and their circus were last studied in depth over four decades ago. Now, for the first time, the brothers' detailed financial records and personal correspondence are available to researchers. Jerry Apps weaves together that information with newspaper accounts, oral histories, colorful anecdotes, and stunning circus ephemera and photos, many never before been published, to illuminate the importance of the Ringlings' accomplishments. He describes how the Ringling Brothers confronted the challenges of taxation, war, economic pressure, changing technology, and personal sorrows to find their place in history. The brothers emerge as complex characters whose ambition, imagination, and pure hucksterism fueled the phenomenon that was the Ringling Brothers' Circus.
 

About this title

From the Publisher:

Foreword by Fred Dahlinger, Jr.

From the Back Cover:

"The Ringling story . . . typifies what was and is possible in America."--from the foreword by circus historian Fred Dahlinger Jr.

About this edition

• Publisher: Wisconsin Historical Society Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 087020355X
• ISBN 13: 9780870203558
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256