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The American Amusement Park Industry: A History of Technology and Thrills. By Judith A. Adams--New York: Twayne Publishers, 1991. xvi + 225 pp. Charts, illustrations, tables, appendixes, notes, selected bibliography, and index. Cloth, $27.95, ISBN 0-8057-9821-8; paper, $11.95, ISBN 0-80579821-8.
Reviewed by Cindy S. Aron
In The American Amusement Park Industry, Judith Adams examines the emergence of amusement parks from Chicago's Columbian Exposition of 1893 to the recent efforts by corporations to export American-style theme parks all over the world. Her book pays attention to the demographic and economic conditions that contributed to the rise of amusement parks in the early twentieth century, that helped bring their decline in the years after the Great Depression, and that finally brought their replacement with theme parks in the 1960s and 1970s. She is also, however, concerned with the cultural meaning of amusement parks. According to Adams, amusement parks embodied America's utopian vision--its quest for a "city on a hill"--which, by the early twentieth century, had taken on a much less spiritual meaning. Amusement parks became visual symbols of America's technological prowess--its ability to harness industrial power to create enclosed, protected enclaves of pleasure and profit.
The story begins with the Columbian Exposition of 1893, which, according to Adams, became the model for future...