This gratifying study of a phenomenon that has imprinted itself upon the folklore of big--city life, is a joyful book focusing upon the street performers in Washington Square Park in New York City.

While documenting the complex expressions of street performance in a specific outdoor environment over a period of four years, "Drawing a Circle in a Square" gives a broad examination to the relationship between outdoor performance and urban culture.

In this book we learn that most American cities prohibit street performance, charging such entertainers with vagrancy or soliciting, the performer--joyfully, cautiously, heroically--persists.

On sidewalks throughout the country, in theaters reduced to their barest essentials, the performer juggles, blows fire, performs magic, and tells jokes, appealing both to our sense of humor and to our longing for a moment of spontaneity in our city--structured lives.

"Drawing a Circle in a Square" is the first scholarly documentation and analysis of street performance. Based primarily upon original research, it makes a contribution that is as much toward a particular subject. Promoting the study of performance as an important and valuable vehicle for inter-disciplinary research and thought, it is a model of the kinds of research being developed in the emerging field of performance studies.

The twelfth-century bishop Otto of Freising was the outstanding historian of his century. "The Two Cities" was his masterwork, spanning in time from Adam and Eve to the coming of the last days -- which he believed had actually begun. In form and philosophy, it stands as a landmark in medieval historiography. As a brother of the Emperor, Otto had an insider's view on the significant events of his day, including the Investiture Controversy and the Second Crusade. His book records how one man grasped for hope as he felt the world dissolving around him.

This book is one of the most valuable contributions to American cultural studies of the nineteenth century in recent years. It explores analytically and critically American cultural life, the developing urbanization between 1840 and the 1880s, and some major patterns within that movement, through the prism of the career and doings of P.T. Barnum.

After years of being out of print, the story behind 'The Greatest Show on Earth' is back for new generations to discover. Through the early twentieth century, the Ringling Brothers created a spectacle like no one had ever seen, and one that still wows audiences to this day. Yet what most people do not know is that events behind the scenes rivaled the excitement and intrigue of the center ring.Originally published in 1960, and told with remarkable honesty by the nephew of the original Ringling brothers, ""The Circus Kings"" remains a clear and unexaggerated telling of what the circus was like for those who lived it.