Meet me in St Louis, Louie

March 28, 2006 5:06 PM

Anyone know of a good written or photographic history of Expositions or World's Fairs?

Hopefully one that covers the phenomena, not just one particular fair.

posted by kuujjuarapik to society & culture (6 comments total)

Iron Bridge to Crystal Palace is a gorgeous pictoral history of the Industrial Revolution, leading up to the Crystal Palace Exposition. The name you want to look for for scholarly analysis is Robert Rydell: World of Fairs, Fair America, All The World's A Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876-1916, and The Books of the Fairs (the last is the least scholarly, and is mostly a listing of the Fair-related items at the Smithsonian).

Some more scholarly works (most have some image plates, but they're not the focus):
Burton Benedict, ed. The Anthropology of World's Fairs
Paul Greenhalgh. Ephemeral Vistas: The Expositions Universelles, Great Exhibitions, and World's Fairs, 1851-1939.
John Findling and Kimberly Pelle, Historical Dictionary of World's Fairs and Expositions.

Neil Harris, Wim de Wit, James Gilbert and Robert Rydell. Grand Illusions: Chicago's World's Fair of 1893 ( Chicago: Chicago Historical Society, 1993) includes some essays specifically on photographic representation of the Columbian Exposition.

There's a quite nice Dover paperback of photos of the 1893 Chicago fair, edited by Stanley Appelbaum, and volumes in the same series(?) for 1939 and 1964.
posted by nonane at 5:26 PM on March 28, 2006

Devil in the White City is well-footnoted and some of Erik Larson's research might give you some ideas. (And it's a good read, if you haven't read it yet.)
posted by awegz at 5:41 PM on March 28, 2006

The Internet Archive has some great footage of various world's fairs. My fave is the kodachrome '39-'40 World's Fair in New York City, of which there are many, many reels.
posted by stinkycheese at 6:06 PM on March 28, 2006

I have a book called Victorian Inventions. It compiles articles from 19th-century scientific journals and features fantastic etchings. It covers some of the World's Fairs.
posted by lunalaguna at 8:46 PM on March 28, 2006

Thanks, everybody. I'll be looking into all of this.

And on further thought, any good and quick ideas as to why there aren't any world's fairs anymore?
posted by kuujjuarapik at 5:30 PM on March 29, 2006

Um, there still are World's Fairs. I've been to at least two in my lifetime (Knoxville, TN, and Brisbane, Australia). Googling World's Fair gives you a ton of stuff about the fairs, including this site that lists all of the past and current Expos.
posted by MsMolly at 7:57 PM on April 2, 2006