Download or read book Nothing but a Circus written by Daniel Levin and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2017-01-26 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Brilliant observations on the anthropology of power. You will laugh aloud and you won't put it down' Daniel Kahneman In this eye-opening exploration of the human weaknesses for power, Daniel Levin takes us on a hilarious journey through the absurd world of our global elites, drawing unforgettable sketches of some of the puppets who stand guard, and the jugglers and conjurers employed within. Most spectacular of all, however, are the astonishing contortions performed by those closest to the top in order to maintain the illusion of integrity, decency, and public service. Based on the author's first hand experiences of dealing with governments and political institutions around the world, Nothing but a Circus offers a rare glimpse of the conversations that happen behind closed doors, observing the appalling lengths that people go to in order to justify their unscrupulous choices, from Dubai to Luanda, Moscow to Beijing, and at the heart of the UN and the US government.
Download or read book Proof of Life written by Daniel Levin and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2021-05-18 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Truly thrilling. Daniel Levin brilliantly conveys both the menace and the evil of Middle Eastern intrigue, and some victories of human kindness over cruelty and despair.” —Daniel Kahneman, New York Times bestselling author of Thinking, Fast and Slow “In laying bare the raw human toll of the ferocious and cruel Syrian conflict, Proof of Life asks the reader to make a choice between cynicism and compassion.” —Ayaan Hirsi Ali, New York Times bestselling author of Infidel Daniel Levin was at his office when he got a call from an acquaintance with an urgent, cryptic request to meet in Paris. A young man had gone missing in Syria. No government, embassy, or intelligence agency would help. Could he? Would he? So begins a suspenseful, shocking, and at times brutal true story of one man’s search to find a missing person in Syria over twenty tense days. Levin, a lawyer turned armed-conflict negotiator, uses his extensive contacts to chase leads throughout the Middle East, meeting with powerful sheikhs, drug lords, and sex traffickers in his pursuit of the truth. He also discovers remarkable people who retain their essential goodness and spirit in the face of adversity. In Proof of Life, Levin dives deep into a shadowy world where few have access—an underground industry of war where everything is for sale, including arms, drugs, and even people. He offers a fascinating study of how people use leverage to get what they want from one another and where no one does a favor without wanting something in return, whether it’s immediately or years down the road. Proof of Life is a fast-paced thriller wrapped in a memoir, a must-read for anyone interested in power dynamics, international affairs, the Middle East, or our growing number of forever wars.
Download or read book The Night Circus written by Erin Morgenstern and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2011-09-13 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Two starcrossed magicians engage in a deadly game of cunning in the spellbinding novel that captured the world's imagination. • "Part love story, part fable ... defies both genres and expectations." —The Boston Globe The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night. But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway: a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them both, this is a game in which only one can be left standing. Despite the high stakes, Celia and Marco soon tumble headfirst into love, setting off a domino effect of dangerous consequences, and leaving the lives of everyone, from the performers to the patrons, hanging in the balance.
Download or read book Battle for the Big Top written by Les Standiford and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2021-06-15 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Les Standiford takes us under the big top and behind the curtain in this richly researched and thoroughly engaging narrative that captures all of the entrepreneurial intrigue and spirit of the American circus.” —Gilbert King, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Devil in the Grove Millions have sat under the “big top,” watching as trapeze artists glide and clowns entertain, but few know the captivating stories behind the men whose creativity, ingenuity, and determination created one of our country’s most beloved pastimes. In Battle for the Big Top, New York Times–bestselling author Les Standiford brings to life a remarkable era when three circus kings—James Bailey, P. T. Barnum, and John Ringling—all vied for control of the vastly profitable and influential American Circus. Ultimately, the rivalry of these three men resulted in the creation of an institution that would surpass all intentions and, for 147 years, hold a nation spellbound. Filled with details of their ever-evolving showmanship, business acumen, and personal magnetism, this Ragtime-like narrative will delight and enchant circus-lovers and anyone fascinated by the American experience.
Download or read book Harley in the Sky written by Akemi Dawn Bowman and published by Simon Pulse. This book was released on 2020-03-10 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Greatest Showman meets This Is Us by way of Sarah Dessen in this heart-wrenching, hopeful contemporary novel about a multiracial teen who risks it all to follow her dreams by joining the circus, from the critically acclaimed author of Starfish. Harley Milano has dreamed of becoming a trapeze artist for as long as she can remember. With parents who run a famous circus in Las Vegas, she spends almost every night in the big top watching their lead aerialist perform, wishing with all her heart and soul that she would be up there herself one day. After a huge fight with her parents, who continue to insist she go to school instead, Harley leaves home, betrays her family, and joins the rival traveling circus Maison du Mystère. There, she is thrust into a world that is both brutal and beautiful, where she learns the value of hard work, passion, and collaboration. At the same time, Harley must come to terms with the truth of her family and her past—and reckon with the sacrifices she made and the people she hurt in order to follow her dreams. From award-winning author Akemi Dawn Bowman comes a luminous, unforgettable examination of love, loyalty, and the hard choices we must make to find where we truly belong.
Download or read book Circus Galacticus written by Deva Fagan and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2011 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Trix's life in boarding school as an orphan charity case has been hard but when an alluring young Ringmaster invites her, a gymnast, to join Circus Galacticus she gains an entire universe of deadly enemies and potential friends, along with a chance to unravel secrets of her own past.
Download or read book The Pilo Family Circus written by Will Elliott and published by HarperCollins Australia. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jamie's tyres squealed to a halt. Standing in the glare of the headlights was an apparition dressed in a puffy shirt with a garish flower pattern It wore oversized red shoes, striped pants and white face paint. It stared at him with ungodly boggling eyes, then turned away...this seemingly random incident triggers a nightmarish chain of events as Jamie finds he is being stalked by a trio of gleefully sadistic clowns who deliver a terrifying ultimatum: you have two days to pass your audition. You better pass it, feller. You're joining the circus. Ain't that the best news you ever got? Jamie is plunged into the horrific alternate universe that is the centuries-old Pilo Family Circus, a borderline world between hell and earth from which humankind's greatest tragedies have been perpetrated. Yet in this place peopled by the gruesome, grotesque and monstrous, where violence and savagery are the norm, Jamie finds that his worst enemy is himself - for when he applies the white face paint, he is transformed into JJ, the most vicious clown of all. And JJ wants Jamie dead.
Download or read book Emeline at the Circus written by Marjorie Priceman and published by Knopf Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2015-02-25 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Caldecott Honor artist and author of the best-selling How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World comes a hilarious picture book romp about the things you can learn and the fun you can have at the circus. When Emeline's teacher, Miss Splinter, takes the second grade on a field trip to the circus, she's careful to make sure it's a learning experience. While she reads -- the text of the book consists of her "lessons" -- the pictures show Emeline getting mixed up in the performances in the circus ring. She becomes a lion tamer, an acrobat, a trapeze artist, and more, before Miss Splinter realizes what's going on. Marjorie Priceman's vibrant, saturated paintings make this dazzling sight gag a feast for the eye. Children will applaud Emeline, laugh out loud at Miss Splinter, and painlessly soak up a few facts about animals, acrobats, and circuses along the way.
Download or read book Nothing But Sky written by Amy Trueblood and published by North Star Editions, Inc.. This book was released on 2018-03-27 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grace Lafferty, an eighteen-year-old wing-walker, thrills crowds with barrel rolls and loop-the-loops in hopes of making enough money to get to the 1922 World Aviation Expo.
Download or read book After the Circus written by Patrick Modiano and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-27 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the hallmarks of French author Patrick Modiano’s writing is a singular ability to revisit particular motifs and episodes, infusing each telling with new detail and emotional nuance. In this evocative novel the internationally acclaimed author takes up one of his most compelling themes: a love affair with a woman who disappears, and a narrator grappling with the mystery of a relationship stopped short. Set in mid-sixties Paris, After the Circus traces the relationship between the narrator, a young man not quite of legal age, and the slightly older, enigmatic woman he first glimpses at a police interrogation. The two lovers make their uncertain way into each other’s hearts, but the narrator soon finds himself in the unsettling, ominous presence of others. Who are these people? Are they real, or simply evoked? Part romance, part detective story, this mesmerizing book fully demonstrates Modiano’s signature use of atmosphere and suggestion as he investigates the perils and the exhilaration of young love.
Download or read book The Invisible Circus written by Jennifer Egan and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2010-09-29 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The highly acclaimed debut novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of A Visit from the Good Squad follows two sisters in the 1970s—one lost, one seeking—on "a trip that takes the reader through stunning emotional terrain" (The New Yorker). The political drama and familial tensions of the 1960s form a backdrop for the world of Phoebe O’Connor, age eighteen, in 1978. Phoebe is obsessed with the memory and death of her sister Faith, a beautiful idealistic hippie who died in Italy in 1970. In order to find out the truth about Faith’s life and death, Phoebe retraces her steps from San Francisco across Europe, a quest which yields both complex and disturbing revelations about family, love, and Faith’s lost generation. This spellbinding novel introduced Egan’s remarkable ability to tie suspense with deeply insightful characters and the nuances of emotion.
Download or read book Queen of the Air written by Dean N. Jensen and published by Crown. This book was released on 2013-06-11 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A true life Water for Elephants, Queen of the Air brings the circus world to life through the gorgeously written, true story of renowned trapeze artist and circus performer Leitzel, Queen of the Air, the most famous woman in the world at the turn of the 20th century, and her star-crossed love affair with Alfredo Codona, of the famous Flying Codona Brothers. Like today's Beyonce, Madonna, and Cher, she was known to her vast public by just one name, Leitzel. There may have been some regions on earth where her name was not a household expression, but if so, they were likely on polar ice caps or in the darkest, deepest jungles. Leitzel was born into Dickensian circumstances, and became a princess and then a queen. She was not much bigger than a good size fairy, just four-foot-ten and less than 100 pounds. In the first part of the 20th century, she presided over a sawdust fiefdom of never-ending magic. She was the biggest star ever of the biggest circus ever, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, The Greatest Show on Earth. In her life, Leitzel had many suitors (and three husbands), but only one man ever fully captured her heart. He was the handsome Alfredo Codona, the greatest trapeze flyer that had ever lived, the only one in his time who, night after night, executed the deadliest of all big-top feats, The Triple--three somersaults in midair while traveling at 60 m.p.h. The Triple, the salto mortale, as the Italians called it, took the lives of more daredevils than any other circus stunt.
Download or read book Circus of Wonders written by Elizabeth Macneal and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-02-01 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the #1 internationally bestselling author of the “lush, evocative Gothic” (The New York Times Book Review) The Doll Factory comes an atmospheric and spectacular novel about a woman transformed by the arrival of a Victorian circus of wonders—“as moving as it is deeply entertaining” (Daniel Mason, New York Times bestselling author). Step up, step up! In 1860s England, circus mania is sweeping the nation. Crowds jostle for a glimpse of the lion-tamers, the dazzling trapeze artists and, most thrilling of all, the so-called “human wonders.” When Jasper Jupiter’s Circus of Wonders pitches its tent in a poor coastal town, the life of one young girl changes forever. Sold to the ringmaster as a “leopard girl” because of the birthmarks that cover her body, Nell is utterly devastated. But as she grows close to the other performers, she finds herself enchanted by the glittering freedom of the circus, and by her own role as the Queen of the Moon and Stars. Before long, Nell’s fame spreads across the world—and with it, a chance for Jasper Jupiter to grow his own name and fortune. But what happens when her fame begins to eclipse his own, when even Jasper’s loyal brother Toby becomes captivated by Nell? No longer the quiet flower-picker, Nell knows her own place in the world, and she will fight for it. Circus of Wonders is a beautiful story about the “complex dance between exploitation and empowerment, and the question of what it really means to have control over your own life” (Naomi Ishiguro, author of Escape Routes).
Download or read book The Flying Circus written by Susan Crandall and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-07-07 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A novel about the beginning years of aviation"--
Download or read book The Circus in Winter written by Cathy Day and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2005-07-06 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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
Download or read book If I Ran the Circus written by Dr. Seuss and published by RH Childrens Books. This book was released on 2013-10-22 with total page 37 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dr. Seuss's classic celebration of youthful imagination! The Circus McGurkus! The World's Greatest Show On the face of the earth, or wherever you go! Young Morris McGurk's has a BIG imagination. He wants to turn the vacant lot behind Sneelock's Store into the Circus McGurkus—the most colossal, stupendous, tremendous show in the world! Here you'll be entertained by bizarre creatures like the Drum-Tummied Snum, the Juggling Jott, and the Harp-Twanging Snarp, and fantastic circus acts performed by Sneelock—a sleepy shop keeper whom Morris images as the daredevil star of his big top! This is Dr. Seuss at his best, celebrating youthful imagination and creating a fantasy world that will delight and transport readers of all ages.
Download or read book Long Road to the Circus written by Betsy Bird and published by Yearling. This book was released on 2023-08-08 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NAMED ONE OF THE BEST CHILDREN’S BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES The story of a girl who rides an ostrich straight to her dreams from the award-winning writer and librarian Betsy Bird, illustrated by Caldecott Medalist David Small. "[A] charming, wacky novel." —The New York Times Twelve-year-old Suzy Bowles is tired of summers filled with chores on her family farm in Burr Oak, Michigan, and desperate to see the world. When her wayward uncle moves back home to the farm, only to skip his chores every morning for mysterious reasons, Suzy decides to find out what he's up to once and for all. And that's when she meets legendary former circus queen Madame Marantette and her ostriches. Before long, Suzy finds herself caught-up in the fast-paced, hilarious world of ostrich riding, a rollicking adventure that just might be her ticket out of Burr Oak. “Beautifully told by one of our best librarians.” —Jon Scieszka, First National Ambassador of Young People’s Literature
