It is hard to find anyone who is not captivated by a circus or carnival. I remember as a boy the excitement I felt when the Shrine Circus came to town. Its venue was the Minneapolis Auditorium, and so I did not think about the effort involved in setting up, dismantling, and moving on to the next stop and later doing it all over again. As Bill Rhodes so aptly explains in his intriguing story, “Mobility is a trademark of the outdoor show business.” He documents that assertion with 119 black-and-white photographs that depict the mobility essential to the demanding tasks involved in putting on the “Big Show”—check out the 1961 movie. Unlike the format of early photo archive titles, Rhodes has included lengthy, detailed, and informative captions about both the equipment and the demanding tasks for circuses and carnivals at each new venue. Tractors include Hough Payloaders, and a variety of Caterpillar, J.I. Case, Deutz, Ford, Oliver, Massey-Ferguson, Allis-Chalmers, John Deere, Loadall, and Clark models. The introduction also includes a listing of terms and definitions that, as the author indicates, “are unique to either the outdoor amusement business or the tractor and construction machine business.”

Book Review by Robert Gabrick