| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 96.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 96.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The 1933 Chicago World's Fair: A Century of Progress. By Cheryl R. Ganz. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008. xiv, 206 pp. $39.95, ISBN 978-0-252-03357-5.)

While scholarship on the 1933 Chicago World's Fair emphasizes its thematic intersection of science, technology, and progress, Cheryl R. Ganz boldly opens her narrative with a chapter on Sally Rand, an exotic fan dancer for the Streets of Paris concession, as the fair's defining emblem of "optimism and faith in progress" (p. 8). Taking her cues from the overriding preferences of the fair's 9 million visitors, Ganz foregrounds the lure of sexual display, spectacle, and post-Prohibition alcohol consumption in shaping the fair's success. She departs from the typical practice in the study of world's fairs that separates and often subordinates discussions of midway attractions or the "entertainment" zone from the central story of the planning and design of "official" fair exhibits. In so doing, Ganz complicates the division of these categories and demonstrates how fair participants and spectators can sidestep the intentions of organizers and create their own meanings out of the fair experience.

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