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The Invention of the Park: From the Garden of Eden to Disney's Magic Kingdom. Karen R. Jones and John Wills. Cambridge: Polity, 2005. Pp. 216. $59.95 (cloth); $29.95 (paper).
The idea of producing a global history of the park, as concept, embodied and virtual reality, lived experience, and imagined space, would be daunting enough if the project were confined to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But Jones and Wills try to top even this vaunting ambition by taking in the whole span of human existence, from creation myths to computergenerated realms of the imagination. It must be said at the outset that not only do they lack the cultural capital to make this grand design effective, but they also lack the control and grasp to develop themes and provide convincing overviews and comparisons across time and between distant and disparate places. As historians of the contemporary United States, with interests in national parks and environmental history, they are at their strongest in dealing with those themes in that setting, and they also have isolated useful passages on the theme park, the mall, and the various worlds of Disney. But the book is a series of disconnected episodes rather than a synthesis, and it is hard to understand the reasons for omitting the spa and seaside promenade, the open-air museum, all sports grounds except the baseball park, the holiday camp, the linear park, the alternative technology park, the car park (perhaps because the authors think of it as a parking lot), or indeed, apart from a stray mention, the garden...