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Book Cover
E-book
Author Simon, Linda, 1946- author.

Title The greatest shows on earth : a history of the circus / Linda Simon
Published London, UK : Reaktion Books, 2014
©2014

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Description 1 online resource (296 pages) : illustrations (some color)
Contents Trick Riders -- Cirques Intimes -- The Biggest Tents -- Cavalcades -- Without a Net -- Beasts -- Clowns -- Feats -- Prodigies -- Transformations
Summary Step right up! and buy a ticket to the Greatest Show on Earth - the Big Top, containing death-defying stunts, dancing bears, roaring tigers, and trumpeting elephants. The circus has always been home to the dazzling and the exotic, the improbable and the impossible--a place of myth and romance, of reinvention, rebirth, second acts, and new identities. Asking why we long to soar on flying trapezes, ride bareback on spangled horses, and parade through the streets in costumes of glitter and gold, this captivating book illuminates the history of the circus and the claim it has on the imaginations of artists, writers, and people around the world -- Source other than Library of Congress
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 271-286) and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Circus -- History
Clowns -- History
PERFORMING ARTS -- Reference.
Circus
Clowns
Zirkus
Circussen.
Cirkus -- historia.
Clowner -- historia.
Genre/Form History
Geschiedenis (vorm)
Form Electronic book
ISBN 1780233981
9781780233987
1780233582
9781780233581