Ringlingville USA

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The Stupendous Story of Seven Siblings and Their Stunning Circus Success

Jerry Apps

The Ringling Bros. Circus is an American icon, but the journey to build the circus was full of twists and turns—all told here in fascinating detail.

280 pages, 8 x 9, 137 b&w photos and illustrations
Paperback:: $26.95 | ISBN: 978-0-87020-355-8
Ebook: $19.99 | ISBN: 978-0-87020-549-1
Publication Date: 10/6/2004

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Front cover of Ringlingville USA by Jerry Apps

Description

The Ringling Brothers began their business under the most modest of circumstances, and through hard work, business savvy, and some luck, they 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 poverty to enduring glory as the kings of the circus world.

Author Jerry Apps weaves together the Ringlings' detailed financial records and personal correspondence with newspaper accounts, oral histories, colorful anecdotes, and stunning circus ephemera and photos—many never before been published—to illuminate the importance of the the brothers' 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.

Author Bio

Celebrated storyteller and historian Jerry Apps was born and raised on a central Wisconsin farm. He was a former county extension agent and professor at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Apps authored more than fifty fiction, nonfiction, and children’s books, including Every Farm Tells a Story: A Tale of Farm Family Values, The Quiet Season: Remembering Country Winters, More Than Words: A Memoir of a Writing Life, and When the White Pine Was King, all published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press.

Congratulations to Jerry Apps for 'Ringlingville USA.' This is an excellent historical story about my grandfather Alf T. Ringling and his brothers. This book brought bittersweet memories of my days with the circus and the lullaby of the wheels.

Paul T. Ringling

“An amazing saga of real-life legends, illustrated throughout with vintage black-and-white photographs, Ringlingville USA is a must for students of Big Top history.”

—Midwest Book Review

"Jerry Apps diligently searched the most extensive circus archives in America before writing about the Brothers Ringling. He covers the lives of the Ringlings and provides extensive examples of family correspondence. He details financial records of their circuses, proving their financial success. Best of all, Ringlingville USA is historically correct."

—Fred Pfening Jr., former editor of Bandwagon: The Journal of the Circus Historical Society