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The summer of 1939 was an epic turning point for America--a brief window between the Great Depression and World War II. It was the last season of unbridled hope for peace and prosperity; by Labor Day, the Nazis were in Poland. And nothing would come to symbolize this transformation from acute optimism to fear and dread more than the 1939 New York World's Fair.
A glorious vision of the future, the Fair introduced television, the fax machine, nylon, and fluorescent lights. The "World of Tomorrow," as it was called, was a dream city built upon a notorious garbage dump--The Great Gatsby's infamous ash heaps. Yet these lofty dreams would come crashing down to earth in just two years. From the fair's opening on a stormy spring day, everything that could go wrong did: not just freakish weather but power failures and bomb threats.
Amid the drama of the World's Fair, four men would struggle against the coming global violence. Albert Einstein, a lifelong pacifist, would...
Former Cosmopolitan executive editor Mauro tries to underscore the irony of the 1939 1940 New York World's Fair, with its theme of world unity, opening on the brink of world war. But Mauro has multiple narratives, moving erratically between the evolution of the fair, with its slogan “Building the World of Tomorrow”; war brewing in Europe; and Germany gobbling up territory (Hitler refused the invitation to have a pavilion at the fair). As, one by one, European nations closed their pavilions, due to the war, the fair's theme rang increasingly hollow. During the fair's run, Einstein famously wrote to President Roosevelt expressing concern over Germany's stockpiling of uranium, giving rise to the Manhattan Project. To this unwieldy narrative Mauro adds the story of two NYPD bomb squad detectives killed when a bomb detonated on the fairgrounds on July 4, 1940. Aiming for another Devil in the White City, Mauro fails to pull all his threads together coherently, falling short of the mark. Photos. (July)
| Price | Condition | Delivery | Seller | Action |
| $99.99 | Digital |
| WonderClub |
Mary Flanagan
reviewed Twilight at the World of Tomorrow: Genius, Madness, Murder, and the 1939 World's Fair on the Brink of War on August 11, 2010
Twilight at the World of Tomorrow
This fascinating book might be re-titled "the life and times of the 1939 New York World's Fair", as it gives an extensive history of the fair itself but also adds in the critically important context of the era, including the ramping up of the world towards global war, the aftermath of the Great Depression, and Albert Einstein's tragic, messy exile from his homeland and tangential association with the Manhattan project.
In a broader sense it captures the mood and struggle of all of America at the beginning of the 1940s, with its confused path out of poverty into wealth, and isolationism to Big Brother global policy. The book is also a sad reminder (and in fact at the end of the book the author says as much himself, in an aside) that the world just doesn't make characters like this anymore. The giant personalities in this book, just a few generations old, already seem mythical in their courage, power and outlandish excesses. We no longer have politicians this dashing, businessmen this outrageously principled, or villains this evil. The stage of the modern world seems pale and small compared to the grand drama that takes place within the pages of this book.
I had a few minor issues with the writing style, mostly the author's insistence on putting little thoughts and feelings into his "characters'" heads that he felt were dramatically appropriate but which can only be his own inventions. He states in the afterword that he had originally intended to write this story as a historical novel, and I think these insertions are the remaining vestiges of that change. In my opinion it detracts a little, but since it was fairly obvious whenever he was doing it is was easy enough to separate the history from the creative license.
Still and all, highly recommended by this dork.
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