In a move that many animal lovers are celebrating, Feld Entertainment, owners of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, have announced that they will be gradually phasing out the use of elephants in their shows.

Animal welfare groups and others have argued for a very long time that elephants have no place in a circus due to their intelligence and social nature and that circuses don’t have the training or resources to give them the care they need. Similar concerns have been raised about the place of other wild animals commonly found under the big top like lions, tigers, and primates, and it may very well be that the days of performing circus animals are numbered.

While animals have always been a big draw for circuses, there are plenty of other things to see and stories to read about life under the big top. Here are a few of our favorites.

Queen of the Air: A True Story of Love and Tragedy at the Circus by Dean N. Jensen

Queen of the Air is the story of German-born trapeze artist and strongwoman Lillian Lietzel. Known to her millions of admirers around the world as simply "Lietzel," this early twentieth-century circus celebrity climbed from obscurity to become the queen of the big top, and later, the first inductee into the International Circus Hall of Fame.

The quick-tempered but beautiful Lietzel didn’t want for male company, but she had only one true love: the turbulent daredevil trapeze flyer Alfredo Codona. As one of the Flying Codona Brothers, Alfredo was famous for regularly performing a "triple" as part of their act: a carefully timed series of midair somersaults performed high above the heads of enrapt circus audiences.

Their star-crossed and often tempestuous romance will convince readers that sometimes the best shows at the circus are the ones in the rings.

The Ordinary Acrobat: A Journey into the Wondrous World of the Circus, Past and Present by Duncan Wall

Sometimes running away and joining the circus sounds like a great plan, but very few of us actually go through with it. Author Duncan Wall did, and The Ordinary Acrobat is his story.

Wall first encountered the French nouveau cirque as an American college student in Paris. Hooked from the very beginning, Wall knew he wanted to become involved, but in order to do so he would have to train at France’s highly competitive École Nationale des Arts du Cirque.

There was only one problem: Wall’s lack of aptitude. Neither an athlete nor a natural performer, he had little to sustain him but his love of the circus. Would that be enough to survive his training and find a place among his highly gifted classmates?

The Ordinary Acrobat is more than just a chronicle of Wall’s own journey, it’s also the story of the circus itself, from its origins in the ancient world to today’s Cirque du Soleil.

The Circus Fire: A True Story of An American Tragedy by Stewart O’Nan

Stewart O’Nan is perhaps best known to readers for his many novels, among them A Prayer for the Dying and The Good Wife, but he’s written several works of narrative nonfiction, among them The Circus Fire.

On a warm summer day in 1944, a Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus Big Top tent caught fire with a crowd of 8,000 people inside. Unbelievably enough, tents were waterproofed with a mix of gasoline and paraffin wax in those days, making them extremely volatile. The fire spread quickly, and during the rush to escape, 165 people were killed and 700 injured.

Despite being one of the nation’s biggest fire-related tragedies, the Hartford circus fire of 1944 is scarcely remembered today. O’Nan’s account, based on interviews with hundreds of survivors, brings the terrible events of that day to vivid and terrifying life.