Overview

Since their inception with New York's Crystal Palace Exhibition in the mid-nineteenth century, world's fairs have introduced Americans to exotic pleasures such as belly dancing and the Ferris Wheel; pathbreaking technologies such as telephones and X rays and futuristic architectural, landscaping and transportation schemes. Billed by their promoters as encyclopaedias of civilization, the expositions impressed tens of millions of fairgoers with model environments and utopian visions. Setting more than 30 world's fairs from 1853 to 1984 in their historical context, the authors show that the expositions reflected and influenced not only the ideals but also the cultural tensions of their times. As mainstays rather than mere ornaments of American life, world's fairs created national support for such issues as the social reunification of North and South after the Civil War, U.S. imperial expansion at the turn of the 20th-century, consumer optimism during the Great Depression, and the essential unity of humankind in a nuclear age.

Full Product Details

Author:   Robert W. Rydell (Robert W. Rydell ) ,  John E. Findling ,  Kimberley D. Pelle
Publisher:   Smithsonian Books
Imprint:   Smithsonian Books
Dimensions:   Width: 16.00cm , Height: 1.70cm , Length: 23.00cm
Weight:   0.386kg
ISBN:  

9781560989684

ISBN 10:   1560989688
Pages:   176
Publication Date:   20 March 2000
Audience:   General/trade ,  Professional and scholarly ,  General ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Awaiting stock  
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