The Foreign Circus

Author: James Bruno
Publisher: Bittersweet House Press
ISBN: 098376428X
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 184

Book Description
How is the world ruled and how do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read." ~ Karl Kraus. An ambassador orders his staff into the lawless interior of a civil war-torn country as guerrillas are targeting foreigners for assassination. Hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S.-bought weaponry are channeled to Afghan religious fanatics, the future Taliban. White House players leak classified information to the media, then blame the leaks on career civil servants. Diplomats succumb to the temptations of exotic overseas sexual playgrounds. Political hacks and campaign bundlers are rewarded with ambassadorships in a diplomatic spoils system that harkens back to the Robber Baron age. Computer nerds Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning steal a veritable Croesus of sensitive national security information and give it away free to our adversaries. What's wrong with this picture? Everything. Our foreign policy is in the hands of fools, the clueless, the self-serving and the politically corrupt. Read this book first. Then fill out papers to emigrate. The author provides a first-hand view from inside the belly of the beast of the U.S. foreign policy establishment. His insights are so spot-on that government censors have blocked out whole sections of text. THE FOREIGN CIRCUS will have you alternatively laughing and shaking your head.

Peru

Author: Kreig A. Adkins
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 9780738560717
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 132

Book Description
In April 1884, Ben Wallace, the owner of the local livery, opened the season of his new circus in Peru and billed it as Wallace and Companys Great Worlds Menagerie and International Circus. It was an instant success and soon grew to be one of the largest and most renowned circuses in American history. Over the next 50 years, many circuses found a home in Peru. Under the direction of the American Circus Corporation, an industry was created in Peru that employed as many as 4,500 people. Circuses like the Hagenbeck-Wallace, John Robinson, and Sells-Floto/Buffalo Bills Wild West Show departed Peru by rail each spring, along with some of the best acts from around the world, including Terrell the Lion King Jacobs; the worlds favorite clown, Emmett Kelly; and animal trainer Clyde Beatty, who played himself in 12 Hollywood movies. In 1929, Ringling Brothers purchased the American Circus Corporation. As the country sank into the Depression, fewer circuses left Peru each season. In 1941, Ringling Brothers closed its winter quarters in Peru, ending an era.

Circus Maximus

Author: Andrew Zimbalist
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815738625
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Book Description
Beyond the headlines of the world's most beloved sporting events Brazil hosted the 2016 men's World Cup at a cost of $15 billion to $20 billion, building large, new stadiums in cities that have little use for them anymore. The projected cost of Tokyo's 2020 Summer Olympic Games is estimated to be as high as $30 billion, much of it coming from the public trough. In the updated and expanded edition of his bestselling book, Circus Maximus: The Economic Gamble Behind Hosting the Olympics and the World Cup, Andrew Zimbalist tackles the claim that cities chosen to host these high-profile sporting events experience an economic windfall. In this new edition he looks at upcoming summer and winter Olympic games, discusses the recent Women's World Cup, and the upcoming men's tournament in Qatar. Circus Maximus focuses on major cities, like London, Rio, and Barcelona, that have previously hosted these sporting events, to provide context for future host cities that will bear the weight of exploding expenses, corruption, and protests. Zimbalist offers a sobering and candid look at the Olympics and the World Cup from outside the echo chamber.

International Circus Hall of Fame

Author: International Circus Hall of Fame
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Circus
Languages : en
Pages : 1

Book Description

The Contemporary Circus

Author: Ernest Albrecht
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 1461706548
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 294

Book Description
The fun, energy, and hard work integral to the exciting world of the circus is lovingly captured in The Contemporary Circus: Art of the Spectacular, an in depth look at the creative process of today's circuses. Through numerous personal interviews with directors, designers, composers and performers, author Ernest Albrecht provides a unique inside view of the journey through which the most innovative and exciting modern circuses are produced, from the director and production team to the performers, and from designing the circus to setting it to music. Case studies of specific productions by the Big Apple Circus, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, and Cirque du Soleil illuminate the artistic give-and-take necessary in such a collaborative process, proving the circus a true art form, one as artistic as theatre or dance. A variety of performers such as animal trainers, dancers, and clowns discuss their approach to their individual specialties, and the text concludes with an examination of the world's circuses and schools and their methods for training circus artists. A full photo spread of 30 beautiful photos will help inspire and enlighten artists and fans alike.

Cirque Global

Author: Louis Patrick Leroux
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773598707
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 363

Book Description
With a billion-dollar industry centred in Montreal, the province of Quebec has established itself as a major hub for contemporary circus. Cirque du Soleil has a global presence, and troupes such as Cirque Éloize and 7 doigts de la main are state-of-the-art innovators. The National Circus School of Montreal - the only state-funded elite training facility in North America - is an influential leader in artistry and technique. Montreal-based Cirque du Soleil’s Cirque du Monde supports arts for social change on many continents and is renowned for its social-circus training and research. Cirque Global is the first book-length study of this new variety of circus and its international impact. The contributors offer critical perspectives on this rapidly developing art form and its aesthetics, ethics, business practices, pedagogical implications, and discursive significations. Essays explore creative, entrepreneurial, and cultural forces that are shaping Quebec’s dynamic nouveau cirque. Lavishly illustrated with photographs from circus performances, the volume showcases Quebec circus’s hybrid forms, which have merged the ethos and aesthetics of European circuses with American commercial and industrial creativity. Cirque Global is the definitive study of the phenomenon of Quebec circus and is an important model for future research on contemporary circus.

Lothar Meggendorfer's International Circus

Author: Lothar Meggendorfer
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780722656471
Category : Circus
Languages : en
Pages : 12

Book Description
Summary : This book unfolds to reveal six scenes featureing circus acts from around the world.

The Circus in Winter

Author: Cathy Day
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547864566
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 307

Book Description
Over a half century, a small Indiana town hosts a circus troupe during the off-seasons in linked stories “as graceful as any acrobat’s high-wire act” (San Francisco Chronicle). A Story Prize Finalist From 1884 to 1939, the Great Porter Circus made the unlikely choice to winter in an Indiana town called Lima, a place that feels as classic as Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, and as wondrous as a first trip to the Big Top. In Lima, an elephant can change the course of a man's life—or the manner of his death. Jennie Dixianna entices men with her dazzling Spin of Death and keeps them in line with secrets locked in a cedar box. The lonely wife of the show’s manager has each room of her house painted like a sideshow banner, indulging her desperate passion for a young painter. And a former clown seeks consolation from his loveless marriage in his post-circus job at Clown Alley Cleaners. In this collection of linked stories spanning decades, Cathy Day follows the circus people into their everyday lives and brings the greatest show on earth to the page. “[An] exquisite story collection.” —The Washington Post “Often funny, always graceful, and rich with a mix of historical and imaginative detail.” —Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried “Sublimely imaginative and affecting.” —The Boston Globe

The Circus at the Edge of the Earth

Author: Charles Everett Wilkins
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
A candid look behind the scenes as well as on stage as Wilkins tours with the Great Wallenda Circus and reports on the daily lives, the courageous acts, and the complex personalities of these professionals who defy death daily.

Circus World

Author: Andrea Ringer
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252056744
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 180

Book Description
From the 1870s to the 1960s, circuses crisscrossed the nation providing entertainment. A unique workforce of human and animal laborers from around the world put on the show. They also formed the backbone of a tented entertainment industry that raised new questions about what constituted work and who counted as a worker. Andrea Ringer examines the industry-wide circus world--the collection of shows that traveled by rail, wagon, steamboat, and car--and the traditional and nontraditional laborers who created it. Performers and their onstage labor played an integral part in the popularity of the circus. But behind the scenes, other laborers performed the endless menial tasks that kept the show on the road. Circus operators regulated employee behavior both inside and outside the tent even as the employees themselves blurred the line between leisure and labor until, in all parts of the show, the workers could not escape their work. Illuminating and vivid, Circus World delves into the gender, class, and even species concerns within an extinct way of life.