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The 1933 Chicago World's Fair: A Century of Progress
Chicago's 1933 world's fair set a new direction for international expositions. Earlier fairs had exhibited technological advances, but Chicago's fair organizers used the very idea of progress to buoy national optimism during the Depression's darkest years. Orchestrated by business leaders and engineers, almost all former military men, the fair reflected a business-military-engineering model that envisioned a promising future through science and technology's application to everyday life. Fair organizers, together with corporate leaders, believed that progress rides on the tide of technological innovation and consumerism.
But not all those who struggled for a voice at Chicago's 1933 exposition had abandoned the traditional notions of progress that entailed social justice and equality, recognition of ethnic and gender-related accomplishments, and personal freedom and expression. The stark pronouncement of the fair's motto, "Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Conforms," was challenged by iconoclasts such as Sally Rand, whose provocative fan dance became a persistent symbol of the fair, as well as a handful of others, including African Americans, ethnic populations and foreign nationals, groups of working women, and even well-heeled socialites. They all met obstacles but ultimately introduced personal, social definitions of "progress" and thereby influenced the ways the fair took shape.
In this engaging social and cultural history, Cheryl R. Ganz examines Chicago's second world's fair through the lenses of technology, ethnicity, and gender. The book also features eighty-six photographs--nearly half of which are full color--of key locations, exhibits, and people, as well as authentic ticket stubs, postcards, pamphlets, posters, and other items. From fan dancers to fan belts, The 1933 Chicago World's A Century of Progress offers the compelling, untold stories of fair planners and participants who showcased education, industry, and entertainment to sell optimism during the depths of the Great Depression.
But not all those who struggled for a voice at Chicago's 1933 exposition had abandoned the traditional notions of progress that entailed social justice and equality, recognition of ethnic and gender-related accomplishments, and personal freedom and expression. The stark pronouncement of the fair's motto, "Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Conforms," was challenged by iconoclasts such as Sally Rand, whose provocative fan dance became a persistent symbol of the fair, as well as a handful of others, including African Americans, ethnic populations and foreign nationals, groups of working women, and even well-heeled socialites. They all met obstacles but ultimately introduced personal, social definitions of "progress" and thereby influenced the ways the fair took shape.
In this engaging social and cultural history, Cheryl R. Ganz examines Chicago's second world's fair through the lenses of technology, ethnicity, and gender. The book also features eighty-six photographs--nearly half of which are full color--of key locations, exhibits, and people, as well as authentic ticket stubs, postcards, pamphlets, posters, and other items. From fan dancers to fan belts, The 1933 Chicago World's A Century of Progress offers the compelling, untold stories of fair planners and participants who showcased education, industry, and entertainment to sell optimism during the depths of the Great Depression.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
270 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2008
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About the author
Cheryl R. Ganz
2 booksCheryl R. Ganz is retired as the chief curator of philately at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum. She was the curator and designer of the "Pots of Promise" exhibition for the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum and is the author of The 1933 Chicago World's Fair: A Century of Progress.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 4, 2024
The text was a two. The photographs, posters, and the map of the fair bring it up to a 3. That and the fact that my grandparents were most likely there. It’s fun to daydream and imagine what attractions they may have visited.
January 16, 2024
Very dry
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 7, 2025
I hope this review will influence those who come across this book hoping it will tell about the history of the fair. I had such illusions, and found this book was instead a modernist retelling of the fair.
One would think that a book about the event entitled “a century of progress“ would deal largely with the midwestern search for optimism within the throes of the great depression. This book, however, was mostly filled, not with descriptions of “progress,” but with “progressive” disappointment in women’s rights in the face of the 1930s, and the internal contradiction of bemoaning the patriarchy for objectifying women on the midway (as a lengthy treatment of peep and and strip shows start off this work) while applauding the strippers for their go-get-em attitudes that we all should admire. But not too closely! because that’s objectification.
The success of what was at the time the singular most-attended event the world had seen was attributed to men’s lasciviousness and the wiles of an obscure showgirl. The ingenuity and optimism of the 1933-34 Fair took a backseat to moralizing on the absence of cultural norms that would not exist until our own time. This book, despite the Smithsonian Institution Secretary’s Research Prize that was bestowed upon it, is less of a history book about the “Century of Progress” and more about a sneering backwards look at how Progressive the Fair wasn’t.
As one example, Ganz bemoans the predominance of white males captaining the fair- then undercuts her argument by explaining that these WWI Vet pioneers of industry, many of whom financed the fair with their own fortunes, were the only ones capable of pulling the thing off. She deeply regrets the position of women (very purposely included in most every step along the way in the run up to 1933) and then admits they couldn’t have accomplished the bustling success that the fair achieved. For another, Ganz weaves us a tale of the woman who is selected to execute one of the predominant sculptures of the fair: a symbol of progress and optimism. Ganz sees this sculpture, with men and women of equal footing and height, as one of a woman’s assertion of her otherwise oppressed power- as if the idea of men and women sharing a load (in a time when families were still intact) was hitherto unknown.
Let me give another example of Ganz’ reading of history with the hermeneutic of masculine suspicion. I quote:
“Fair management strictly adhered to its stated goal of integrating women’s exhibits under the fair’s general umbrella. Another way to understand it is that it underscores to what extremes the fair organizer rhetoric would go in order to squelch any notion of women’s autonomy at the exposition.”
Is it??
Is THAT a way to understand this?
One page before this senseless interpretation, Ganz cites and admits that women of the time thought that, having passed the 19th Amendment and achieved equality by their standards, the women of 1933-34 were keen to avoid “special recognition” and rather be integrated into mankind’s progress as a whole, not counted as something separate.
It seems to me that we ought to take women’s word for it at the time, viewing it through a hermeneutic of charity.
But no such luck is to be found in this book: only more sneering.
As someone who has a nearly lifelong infatuation with The Fair and has personally known attendees, this book was, between its lines, a sad description of the modern mind and less a description of the Fair and its wonders.
Whomever you are- DON’T read this book.
I powered though this loathsome so-called academic work so you don’t fall into the same trap I did.
One would think that a book about the event entitled “a century of progress“ would deal largely with the midwestern search for optimism within the throes of the great depression. This book, however, was mostly filled, not with descriptions of “progress,” but with “progressive” disappointment in women’s rights in the face of the 1930s, and the internal contradiction of bemoaning the patriarchy for objectifying women on the midway (as a lengthy treatment of peep and and strip shows start off this work) while applauding the strippers for their go-get-em attitudes that we all should admire. But not too closely! because that’s objectification.
The success of what was at the time the singular most-attended event the world had seen was attributed to men’s lasciviousness and the wiles of an obscure showgirl. The ingenuity and optimism of the 1933-34 Fair took a backseat to moralizing on the absence of cultural norms that would not exist until our own time. This book, despite the Smithsonian Institution Secretary’s Research Prize that was bestowed upon it, is less of a history book about the “Century of Progress” and more about a sneering backwards look at how Progressive the Fair wasn’t.
As one example, Ganz bemoans the predominance of white males captaining the fair- then undercuts her argument by explaining that these WWI Vet pioneers of industry, many of whom financed the fair with their own fortunes, were the only ones capable of pulling the thing off. She deeply regrets the position of women (very purposely included in most every step along the way in the run up to 1933) and then admits they couldn’t have accomplished the bustling success that the fair achieved. For another, Ganz weaves us a tale of the woman who is selected to execute one of the predominant sculptures of the fair: a symbol of progress and optimism. Ganz sees this sculpture, with men and women of equal footing and height, as one of a woman’s assertion of her otherwise oppressed power- as if the idea of men and women sharing a load (in a time when families were still intact) was hitherto unknown.
Let me give another example of Ganz’ reading of history with the hermeneutic of masculine suspicion. I quote:
“Fair management strictly adhered to its stated goal of integrating women’s exhibits under the fair’s general umbrella. Another way to understand it is that it underscores to what extremes the fair organizer rhetoric would go in order to squelch any notion of women’s autonomy at the exposition.”
Is it??
Is THAT a way to understand this?
One page before this senseless interpretation, Ganz cites and admits that women of the time thought that, having passed the 19th Amendment and achieved equality by their standards, the women of 1933-34 were keen to avoid “special recognition” and rather be integrated into mankind’s progress as a whole, not counted as something separate.
It seems to me that we ought to take women’s word for it at the time, viewing it through a hermeneutic of charity.
But no such luck is to be found in this book: only more sneering.
As someone who has a nearly lifelong infatuation with The Fair and has personally known attendees, this book was, between its lines, a sad description of the modern mind and less a description of the Fair and its wonders.
Whomever you are- DON’T read this book.
I powered though this loathsome so-called academic work so you don’t fall into the same trap I did.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews