The Ringling Brothers began their business under the most modest of circumstances and through hard work, business savvy, and some luck 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 immigrant poverty to enduring glory as the kings of the circus world. The Ringlings and their circus were last studied in depth over four decades ago. Now, for the first time, the brothers' detailed financial records and personal correspondence are available to researchers. Jerry Apps weaves together that information with newspaper accounts, oral histories, colorful anecdotes, and stunning circus ephemera and photos, many never before been published, to illuminate the importance of the Ringlings' 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.
 

Jerry Apps is the author of more than thirty-five books on Wisconsin and U.S. history. His writing has appeared in such publications as The Journal of American History, Wisconsin Trails, and the Wisconsin Magazine of History, and he is a regular columnist for Wisconsin Guide. He is especially known for his histories of rural and country life.  Apps has won numerous awards for his writing from the Wisconsin Library Association, the  Council for Wisconsin Writers, the Robert F. Gard Foundation, the Upper Midwest Booksellers Association, and the Wisconsin Historical Society. In 2001 he received the Barnes and Noble Pride of Wisconsin Award for Excellence in the Field of Regional Literature. He divides his time between his home in Madison and his farm, Roshara, near Wild Rose, Wisconsin.