The Jim Rose Circus is still coasting along on buzz created some seven years ago, when it was the talk of Lollapalooza's second stage. The modern-day traveling freak show has titillated, delighted, and disgusted jaded audiences with sword-swallowing, bug-eating, needle-sticking, fire-breathing, and an act that involved beer being pumped out of someone's stomach and consumed again by an audience member or fellow freak. It was hardly revolutionary in concept, but its members were proud bearers of the sideshow torch. Circus Of The Scars author Jan T. Gregor was the troupe's road manager from 1991 to '93, and though his book purports to be a history of the Jim Rose Circus, his is the only period highlighted. Though informative and entertaining, much of Circus Of The Scars comes off as merely public bitching by a disgruntled ex-employee. Gregor paints Rose as the biggest freak of all, a manipulative control freak who would, among other things, go through people's personal belongings, routinely divert hostility from himself by turning troupe members against one another, and hog the media spotlight, the lion's share of the glory, and the profits. Over the course of the book, Gregor reproduces conversations, increasing the likelihood of error and creating an open invitation for greater scrutiny. Readers should always be leery of this tactic, but Gregor uses dialogue to better capture troupe members as individuals rather than as their larger-than-life personas. It's hard to say whether his version of the story is any more or less valid than Rose's own book, Freak Like Me. Gregor, after all, has a bone to pick, and his agenda seems to include increasing the historical importance of his wife, graphic designer Ashleigh Talbot. However, given Rose's categorical dismissal of former members (stating that the troupe is moving into a less-shocking realm than the one of Matt "The Tube" Crowley and The Torture King, despite Rose's inclusion of enormous women sumo wrestling and Mexican transvestite wrestling) and his penchant for self-aggrandizement, it's not that hard to believe. Even in the event that Gregor's account is complete fiction, his book is entertaining from start to finish, an interesting look at an unforgettable piece of '90s pop culture.