| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.1 | The History Cooperative

Gary S. Cross and John K. Walton. The Playful Crowd: Pleasure Places in the Twentieth Century. New York: Columbia University Press. 2005. Pp. viii, 308. $32.50.
This book by Gary S. Cross and John K. Walton is remarkable for a number of reasons, not least that it manages to tie together two different research projects on either side of the Atlantic and still achieve fluency and synthesis. It is noteworthy whenever a jointly authored book achieves this, but here the process has clearly given a new momentum to the research undertaken by both scholars, and the result is an engaging and fully realized comparative project.	1
Cross and Walton examine four paradigmatic developments in the history of twentieth-century leisure: the rise and decline of Coney Island in New York; the evolution of the British seaside resort of Blackpool; the replacement of "Coney" style pleasures (what the authors call "industrial saturnalia") with the invented nostalgia of Disneyland; and the more grounded nostalgic pleasures of the Beamish museum of industrial and social history. The comparisons yield a greater understanding of the development and direction taken by each of these leisure places, as well as highlighting their significance to the crowds who visited in huge numbers.	. . .

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