Download or read book Ringling the Last Laugh written by Michael Lancaster and published by . This book was released on 2012-05-01 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Riveting...a visceral approach...resonates with a golden glow that reminds readers of great American novels from the past..." David W. Menefee - BookPleasures.com On a snowy spring night in New York, in 1936, John Ringling, the Great Circus King, exited Madison Square Garden through a dark back alley. He walked out to 49th Street and met an old friend he hadn't seen in decades. Ringling, almost seventy, was disheveled and alone. The two of them sat at a bar near Union Square, where John Ringling recounted the story of the five Ringling brothers, their circus, and John's story as the last one on the lot. Seemingly in ruin then, John Ringling has had the Last Laugh, not only on those who forsook him but on the amusement world and the art world. Michael Lancaster is the great grandson of Charles Ringling, one of the five Ringling brothers. He is a sculptor and a fourth generation artist. He has spent over thirty years listening to the stories of the famed Boys From Baraboo. This is his first novel. It is not just a circus story, although there is a circus story in it; this is an American story.
Download or read book Ringling written by David C. Weeks and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 1993-10-01 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Nicholas Ringling's years in Sarasota spanned the final quarter-century of his life. On Florida's west coast, as the Ringling's Circus became "the greatest show on earth," he collected Baroque paintings, European decorative art, and Italian statuary, built the ostentatious mansion Ca'd'Zan, developed and marketed most of the barrier islands around Sarasota Bay, and became the focus of a confusing pastiche of acclaim, misconception, and suspicion. Sarasota's Ringling Museum is his priceless cultural legacy to the people of Florida and the world of art--an inheritance at risk for the ten years that Ringling's estate was in probate. The author of this first intensive look at Ringling's presence in Sarasota sets the man against the backdrop of Florida from World War I through the land boom and the turbulent twenties into the depression years and Ringling's lapse into obscurity. Illustrated with nearly fifty black-and-white photographs, many never before published, this is the chronicle of a man, as the foreword claims, "who was not afraid to think or live on a grand scale, who knew what he wanted from life, and from art."
Download or read book John Ringling written by John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art and published by John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art Foundation. This book was released on 1996 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
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 The Circus Kings written by Henry North and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-08-24 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Circus Kings, first published in 1960 and authored by a nephew of the original Ringling Brothers, is a fascinating insider's account of circus life and lore. From humble beginnings in Baraboo, Wisconsin, the Ringling family would go on to create "The Greatest Show on Earth," delighting audiences across America. Along the way, however, were the behind-the-scenes financial struggles, tragedies such as fires and labor strikes, legal battles, and changing entertainment tastes. Henry Ringling North ran Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus from 1936 to 1967, along with his older brother, John. Included are 18 pages of photographs.
Download or read book The Last Laugh written by Phil Berger and published by Cooper Square Press. This book was released on 2000-11-14 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Last Laugh is the first and only book to take readers deep into the bizarre universe of the standup comic, from the classic years of Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, and Shecky Greene, to today's comedy superstars. Phil Berger shows how styles and trends in standup have changed over the past fifty years, but how taking the stage in a comedy club is as tough as it's always been. Performers profiled in the book include Woody Allen, Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Elaine Boosler, Robert Klein, Bill Cosby, Billy Crystal, Dick Gregory, Andy Kaufman, Steve Martin, Cheech and Chong, Eddie Murphy, and a host of others. Filled with comics' hilarious routines and anecdotes, this substantially updated edition also chronicles the lives and careers of more recent artists, including Richard Lewis and Jay Leno.
Download or read book Breakfast with Buddha written by Roland Merullo and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the behest of his sister, Otto Ringling finds himself reluctantly accompanying her guru, an enigmatic Mongolian monk, on a trip through Middle America to their childhood home, introducing his passenger to some American "fun" along the way.
Download or read book Discovering the Clown Or the Funny Book of Good Acting written by Christopher Bayes and published by Theatre Communications Group. This book was released on 2019-07-16 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A must-have guide for actors both young and old.
Download or read book A Crazy much Love written by Joy Jordan-Lake and published by Two Lions. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "How MUCH is the crazy-much love?" This simple question is answered as two parents recount the journey of adopting their daughter and the many milestone moments that follow. From the child's first bath and first time riding a tricycle, all the way to her boarding that big yellow bus, the crazy-much love grows SO MUCH that it spills out the windows and busts down the doors. A warm, lyrical celebration of the deep love parents hold for their children, and a comforting message for kids about how there can be only one special YOU.
Download or read book Good for Nothing written by Brandon Graham and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In Flip Mellis's recent past he had, by his own assessment, his feet planted squarely on terra firma. As a husband and father he was a consistent breadwinner. As a business professional, he was a go-getter. For twenty years he did all that was expected of him, if not much more. But a job loss in his middle years, in the midst of a national economic crisis, knocked Flip squarely on his big, soft ass where he has been wallowing for nearly a year. Over the course of one hectic week, replete with a cast of colorful characters, Flip is forced by circumstances of his own invention to finally get his life headed in the right direction"--
Download or read book Life Expectancy written by Dean Koontz and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2007-06-15 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With his bestselling blend of nail-biting intensity, daring artistry, and storytelling magic, Dean Koontz returns with an emotional roller coaster of a tale filled with enough twists, turns, shocks, and surprises for ten ordinary novels. Here is the story of five days in the life of an ordinary man born to an extraordinary legacy—a story that will challenge the way you look at good and evil, life and death, and everything in between. Jimmy Tock comes into the world on the very night his grandfather leaves it. As a violent storm rages outside the hospital, Rudy Tock spends long hours walking the corridors between the expectant fathers' waiting room and his dying father's bedside. It's a strange vigil made all the stranger when, at the very height of the storm's fury, Josef Tock suddenly sits up in bed and speaks coherently for the frist and last time since his stroke. What he says before he dies is that there will be five dark days in the life of his grandson—five dates whose terrible events Jimmy will have to prepare himself to face. The first is to occur in his twentieth year; the second in his twent-third year; the third in his twenty-eighth; the fourth in his twenty-ninth; the fifth in his thirtieth. Rudy is all too ready to discount his father's last words as a dying man's delusional rambling. But then he discovers that Josef also predicted the time of his grandson's birth to the minute, as well as his exact height and weight, and the fact that Jimmy would be born with syndactyly—the unexplained anomal of fused digits—on his left foot. Suddenly the old man's predictions take on a chilling significance. What terrifying events await Jimmy on these five dark days? What nightmares will he face? What challenges must he survive? As the novel unfolds, picking up Jimmy's story at each of these crisis points, the path he must follow will defy every expectation. And with each crisis he faces, he will move closer to a fate he could never have imagined. For who Jimmy Tock is and what he must accomplish on the five days when his world turns is a mystery as dangerous as it is wondrous—a struggle against an evil so dark and pervasive, only the most extraordinary of human spirits can shine through. This ebook edition contains an excerpt of Dean Koontz’s The Silent Corner.
Download or read book Frog Music written by Emma Donoghue and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times bestselling author of Room, a young French burlesque dancer living in San Francisco is ready to risk anything in order to solve her friend’s murder—but only if the killer doesn’t get her first. Summer of 1876: San Francisco is in the fierce grip of a record-breaking heat wave and a smallpox epidemic. Through the window of a railroad saloon, a young woman named Jenny Bonnet is shot dead. The survivor, her friend Blanche Beunon, is a French burlesque dancer. Over the next three days, she will risk everything to bring Jenny's murderer to justice—if he doesn't track her down first. The story Blanche struggles to piece together is one of free-love bohemians, desperate paupers, and arrogant millionaires; of jealous men, icy women, and damaged children. It's the secret life of Jenny herself, a notorious character who breaks the law every morning by getting dressed: a charmer as slippery as the frogs she hunts. In thrilling, cinematic style, Frog Music digs up a long-forgotten, never-solved crime. Full of songs that migrated across the world, Emma Donoghue's lyrical tale of love and bloodshed among lowlifes captures the pulse of a boomtown like no other. "Her greatest achievement yet . . . Emma Donoghue shows more than range with Frog Music—she shows genius." —Darin Strauss, author of Half a Life.
Download or read book Copping Free written by Matthew Carnahan and published by Villard. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When he wakes up naked by the side of the highway in the middle of the desert, twenty-two-year-old Bailey Quinn is only sure of a few things: He’s in a world of testicle pain. He’s tripping out of his head on peyote. And someone seems to have made a half-assed attempt at slashing his throat. As Bailey hits the road to track down his “friends” in Matthew Carnahan’s short novel, a black-edged, hilarious caper unfolds.
Download or read book Come My Little Angel written by Diane Noble and published by Multnomah. This book was released on 2001 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young girl writes and produces a play to help fund a church in a backwoods town in the high Sierras.
Download or read book Beneath the Surface written by John Hargrove and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2015-03-24 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Now a New York Times Best Seller* Over the course of two decades, John Hargrove worked with 20 different whales on two continents and at two of SeaWorld's U.S. facilities. For Hargrove, becoming an orca trainer fulfilled a childhood dream. However, as his experience with the whales deepened, Hargrove came to doubt that their needs could ever be met in captivity. When two fellow trainers were killed by orcas in marine parks, Hargrove decided that SeaWorld's wildly popular programs were both detrimental to the whales and ultimately unsafe for trainers. After leaving SeaWorld, Hargrove became one of the stars of the controversial documentary Blackfish. The outcry over the treatment of SeaWorld's orca has now expanded beyond the outlines sketched by the award-winning documentary, with Hargrove contributing his expertise to an advocacy movement that is convincing both federal and state governments to act. In Beneath the Surface, Hargrove paints a compelling portrait of these highly intelligent and social creatures, including his favorite whales Takara and her mother Kasatka, two of the most dominant orcas in SeaWorld. And he includes vibrant descriptions of the lives of orcas in the wild, contrasting their freedom in the ocean with their lives in SeaWorld. Hargrove's journey is one that humanity has just begun to take-toward the realization that the relationship between the human and animal worlds must be radically rethought.
Download or read book Palm Beach Mar a Lago and the Rise of America s Xanadu written by Les Standiford and published by Atlantic Monthly Press. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the first Gilded Age to the second, a “charming, zippy history . . . a rollicking, informative lesson in real estate, American history, and current events.” —Town & Country Looking at the island of Palm Beach today, with its unmatched mansions, tony shops, and pristine beaches, one is hard pressed to visualize the dense tangle of Palmetto brush and mangroves that it was when visionary entrepreneur and railroad tycoon Henry Flagler first arrived there in April 1893. Trusting his remarkable instincts, he built the Royal Poinciana Hotel within a year, and two years later, what was to become the legendary Breakers—instantly establishing the island as the preferred destination for those who could afford it. Over the next 125 years, Palm Beach has become synonymous with exclusivity—especially its most famous residence, Mar-a-Lago. As Les Standiford relates, the high walls of Mar-a-Lago and other manses like it were seemingly designed to contain scandal within as much as keep intruders out. This book tells the history of this fabled landscape intertwined with the colorful lives of its famous and infamous protagonists, from Flagler’s two wives to architect Addison Mizner, who created Palm Beach’s “Mediterranean look” to heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post and her husband E. F. Hutton, the original residents of Mar-a-Lago. With authoritative detail, Standiford recounts how Marjorie ruled Palm Beach society until her death in 1973, and how the fate of her mansion threatened to tear apart the very fabric of the town until Donald Trump acquired it in 1985. “Edifying, energetic, and captivating.” —Florida Weekly
