Rating: 
Summary: Very well written!
Review: There is no getting around the fact that the subject matter of this book is horrifying. However, Mr. O'Nan does a superb job of relating the facts of the fire without relying on the ghoulishness of it all. (I appreciated that Mr. O'Nan saw to it that glimpses of mankind at its best were portrayed alongside glimpses of mankind at its worst.) I could not put this down. More frightening than anything Stephen King could ever imagine!
Rating:
Summary: But There Were No Animals
Review: Back before guidelines were set up for fire prevention and crowd control, the Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Circus had set up their tent on July 6, 1944 in the city of Hartford, Connecticut. This tent was different, though, in a deadly way unknowing to the throngs of people jamming in to the see performance. It had been "waterproofed" with a 6,000 gallons of white gasoline and 18,000 pounds of paraffin. There were no laws about the use of gasoline and paraffin, and this was common practice of circuses at this time. An accident occurred, a flame sparked, and within only a few minutes the entire tent was engulfed in flames trapping the hundreds of people there to see the circus. At the end when the tent had completely burned to the ground, 167 people had either been burned horribly to death or trampled in the melee that ensued. The clowns indeed cried that day. Stewart O'Nan brings this story vividly to life in his book The Circus Fire. The main sentence that stands out in his narrative are the survivors saying they would never forget the sounds of the animals screaming in death. But there were no animals, those were human screams. This is one book I could not put down. He writes in excruciating detail the pain and anguish the circus, town and people suffered after the devastation. The book is hard to read at times but O'Nan just writes as it was, which was painful. This book is an overwhelming piece of nonfiction, and I recommend it highly.
Rating: 
Summary: Not very compelling
Review: As a historical text, Stewart O'Nan's "The Circus Fire" is OK, but to me it definitely was not "brilliantly constructed" as promised in the summary on the back of the book. The story itself is definitely a fascinating one and one and I for one am curious about the lack of a comprehensive history before O'Nan's. That aside, this book is so bogged down in a massive jumble of facts that it is difficult to follow in parts and I lost interest well before the end. If the author had concentrated on five or ten principal characters instead of 34+, this would have been a more compelling read. I realize that everyone involved has a story to tell, but it is hard to keep each person straight due to the sheer amount of people that O'Nan attempts to include.
Rating: 
Summary: Good news, bad news...
Review: While this book was chockful of facts about the fire, they were not woven together in any logical manner. It was rather like reading a pile of index file notecards that had fallen in a pile on the floor. Details about individuals were interrupted with tidbits of information about the fire or the circus tent, then interrupted again by what was going on elsewhere in town -- at the morgue, police station, or in people's homes. While the information is thorough and seems to be more complete than other books on this subject, it is almost impossible to enjoy reading such a disjointed hodgepodge of information. Also, the photographs are wonderful but are so small that it is impossible to make out most of their content, despite detailed captions beneath each. Because the content is so fascinating overall, I don't regret buying the book, but I do wish the author would give it another try or perhaps partner with a plot-line specialist who could give this wonderful collection of information a way to hang together.
Rating:
Summary: Almost a novel
Review: Well-written and impossible to put down. It is a true story and the book is a history; however, it reads like a novel. I especially liked the addition of what happened to the survivors years later.
Rating: 
Summary: a pleasent surprise
Review: I was bouncing through shelves at a local book store when I came across this book. From not hearing of the circus fire of 1944 I immediately wanted to read it but not having any money on me I quickly scribbled it down on my hand.... Anyway, my point being I had a feeling that I must read this book. so I did. while reading it I had a great feeling of preasure against my heart so much so that it hurt to breath. Very intense. I really felt the time period and the people. I liked the way the author puts the story together. I have to say I did not know the storytelling was going to be so interesting. I don't know if I get easily carried away by books considering I am only 13 years of age, and I haven't read more then 80 books in my entire life! so I don't know if I would recommend it to anyone. It depends on your taste, and me being a sucker for devastating books sooo... I loved it!
Rating: 
Summary: "I did not want to write this book."
Review: Having read two earlier works by O'Nan, the novels "The Names of the Dead" and "A Prayer for the Dying", and having been impressed with his language and narrative structure in both, I decided to read this work of non-fiction, "The Circus Fire", an account of The Hartford circus fire of 1944 and the following investigations.
Amazon lists as a requirement for writing a review that the reviewer should "focus on the book's content and context". I am interpreting that stricture to encompass also the book's language, grammar, and style.
I have to say I had trouble finishing this book. While interested in the account of the Hartford circus fire of 1944 I was, page after page, increasingly irritated by a series of vivid clashes with my previous experience of O'Nan's writing ability.
While obviously a thorough researcher O'Nan lacks the ability to condense and formulate his findings into a readable non-fiction narrative. He presents us with a bewildering series of (often very short) paragraphs in which arbitrary changes in subject matter, viewpoint, and literary style are guaranteed to cause confusion. The diversions from standard grammar within those paragraphs, if considered leniently, could be interpreted as eccentricity, less leniently, as affectation. This writer has been writing for too long to be still searching so desperately for a new voice. O'Nan's latest grammatical discovery appears to be the use of ellipsis and he has applied this so violently that on one occasion I had to go back 26 pages before I discovered who and what a sentence referred to. The use of 1940s slang and terminology is unfortunate; it is the rare reader who wants to research out-of-date language to comprehend contemporary writing.
"I did not want to write this book. Why I attempted it I'm not precisely sure." is how O'Nan opens the Forword to "The Circus Fire". The book itself fails miserably to validate the explanations that make up the rest of the Forword in which O'Nan attempts to excuse such a strange introduction.
Not entirely negative, I could use the following quote to point O'Nan towards a lucrative future. "Goodrow was methodical, a plodder, a meat-and-potatoes guy, just the facts, ma'am."
There is always a market for another pulp fiction detective story.
Rating:
Summary: moving history
Review: After seeing the author on "Book TV'" discussing this work, I had to purchase it.
I was suprised, this book is an even more moving experience. In fact, at times, it's so moving that it is almost overwhelming. Stewart O'Nan does a masterful job of involking an event that happened over 50 years ago in a fresh voice. In the hands of another writer it might seem mouldy and distant, yet O'Nan makes the reader feel like they've experienced the events yesterday.
This book is a tragedy, a history, a horror story, a true crime novel, a community story, and a legal thriller all in one. It's hard to say that you've loved a book about an event this tragic, but this is one of the most compelling and moving books that I've read.
Rating:
Summary: Learning from History
Review: It's been said that it takes a tragedy to spur safety regulations. The Hartford circus fire is proof of just that. Prior to this fire, circus tents were waterproofed with gasoline and paraffin. Today, any circus that comes to Hartford plays in the civic center. O'Nan relates the tragedy that made the circus safer for future generations tastefully and respectfully, using eyewitness accounts and newpaper stories. For area residents, the story is brought home with plenty of familiar names, places and stories. He covers the investigation of Little Miss 1565, the unburned and yet strangely unclaimed victim, with particular detail and casts doubt on her identification ten years ago. Anyone will find it difficult to sit inside a circus tent after reading this book, despite the knowledge that exits are clearly marked and the tent is not flamable.
Rating:
Summary: An all-encompassing recreation
Review: My father, then eight, and his mother survived the fire, without injury. My father wouldn't read the book after I recommended it to him, my grandmother read the part about the actual fire and said that it captured the event perfectly. She was astonished at how accurate it was. Although they had almost no trouble getting out of the tent (they climbed down under their bleacher section, lifted up the canvas wall, and were out very quickly, so quickly in fact, that my grandmother said that she was horrified to hear screaming when the tent collapsed because she had assumed that everyone could get out as easily as they did), my father, to this day will not enter a tent of any kind. Read the book. It's VERY well-researched, and VERY exciting. A good read.
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