Fair America: World's Fairs in the United States

World's Fairs have introduced Americans to technologies such as telephones and X-rays, to futuristic architecture and transportation schemes, and to new and exotic forms of entertainment such as the Ferris Wheel and belly-dancing. Billed by their promoters as "encyclopedias of civilization," the expositions impressed tens of millions of fairgoers with model environments and utopian visions.

Illustrated with archival photographs of fair buildings, exhibits, and souvenirs, this book surveys 150 years of these dazzling, culturally revealing events.