Card catalogue data
Twilight at the World of Tomorrow: Genius, Madness, Murder, and the 1939 World’s Fair on the Brink of War by James Mauro (New York: Ballantine Books, 2010)
Category: History
Format: Hard cover from a used bookstore
Pages: 350 (405 with end matter)
This is the first book I’ve read in January, and thus the first book of 2017. Although the case could be made for counting it as the 23rd book of 2016 since I only read the final few pages on January 1. No matter. Let’s count it for 2017 since I have a higher goal this year.
First paragraph
By all accounts, 1934 was a remarkable year: Flash Gordon made his first appearance in the comic strips, and Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night, starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, would go on to win every major Academy Award. In May, one of the worst storms of the Dust Bowl swept away massive heaps of Great Plains topsoil; in August, Adolph Hitler became Germany’s new Führer. Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, Bonnie and Clyde, and John Dillinger were all gunned down in spectacular, tabloid-titillating fashion. On Broadway, Ethel Merman opened in Cole Porter’s big new hit, Anything Goes; while farther uptown, in Harlem, seventeen-year-old Ella Fitzgerald made her singing debut at the recently christened Apollo Theater.
Why I read this book
I have a fascination with the great world’s fairs and expositions of a bygone era and I’ve read a couple of other histories of them, including The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson and Tomorrow-Land: The 1964-65 World’s Fair and the Transformation of America by Joseph Tirella.
The book in a paragraph
This look at the New York World’s Fair of 1939 and 1940—built on The Great Gatsby’s infamous ash heaps—follows the lives of several key figures, including Albert Einstein, the Fair’s president Grover Whalen, two NYC police detectives, President Franklin Roosevelt, Mayor La Guardia, and others. It shows the irony of an extravagant gathering of nations to promote peace while the storms of World War 2 gather. The “World of Tomorrow” introduced television, the fax machine, nylon, and fluorescent lights to the world, but its lofty dreams of the future would come crashing down two years later.
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
This is a wonderfully written book that focuses on a forgotten event in our past. The idea of a World’s Fair seems like an anachronism today. But in this book the excitement and drama behind the scenes are brought to life. Highly recommended.