A review by muffmacguff
Under the Big Top: A Season with the Circus by Bruce Feiler

3.0

This book was basically fine. He travels with a circus for a season and writes about it. He begs to be allowed to work as a clown while reporting on the circus and I think the book is weaker for it. He spends barely any time interviewing the circus staff because there’s a thick line between them and the performers. He acknowledges animal rights issues without doing literally any reporting himself on what abuse is actually happening - he mostly takes the animal trainers’ word for it, which is sort of silly because he repeatedly notes that everyone in the circus lies to him all the time. There are definitely some interesting stories in here but his analysis is very surface; he repeatedly insists that the circus IS America, like ok dude we get it. I think there’s a much more thoughtful book hidden in here that a more talented writer (and one who wasn’t embedded as a performer) would have been able to bring out. Anyway, it’s a breezy enough read for those of us still dreaming of running off with the circus.