The Circus Age: Culture and Society under the American Big Top
The sight of trains pulling in and circus tents being set up was  the highlight of the year for many American towns at the turn of  the century; schools and stores closed and everyday life stood  still. In 1903, 98 circuses and menageries the highest number in  U.S. history traveled the nation. In this fascinating,  provocative history of a democratic form of public  entertainment, Davis, an American studies professor at the  University of Texas at Austin, elucidates the enormous cultural  impact of the railroad circus and how it became a "powerful  cultural icon" and a concrete representation "of racial  diversity, gender difference, bodily variety, animalized human  beings, and humanized animals" as well as a "celebration of  America's emerging role as a global power." Davis presents her  theoretical material carefully, but the profuse illustrations of  her theses make the book compulsively readable. By meticulously  scrutinizing individual circus acts and exhibits e.g., "statue  girls," near-naked women covered in white greasepaint to  resemble art, challenged concepts of femininity; "learned pigs"  questioned the concept of human intelligence; clowns and  strongmen became the visible manifestations of public  discussions about masculinity she shows how circuses provided a  vibrant, visceral forum for the era's cultural changes. Arguing  that circuses "helped catapult a 'nation of loosely connected  islands' into a modern nation-state with an increasingly shared  national culture," Davis traces how this continues today, in  different forms, in places like Disneyland and Las Vegas. Smart  and impressively researched, this is an important contribution  to the literature of popular culture and U.S. cultural history.  Color and b&w; illus. (Sept. 23)Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.