1939: The Lost World of the Fair [Hardcover]

David Gelernter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1995

1939 evokes a time when America and the world were unknowingly poised on the brink of an irrevocable transformation. Gelernter gives readers a virtual reality picture of the 1939 World's Fair, and the passionate feelings it still evokes in those who were there. Illustrations.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This book is a strange beast: a meditation on the meaning of the 1939 New York World's Fair seen through the lens of David Gelernter's angry political opinion that society today has gone to moral rot and ruin--mostly because of the ideas of New York-style liberals, who have led us astray. Richly detailed observations of the 1939 World's Fair and its social milieu are interspersed with a rather sparse fictional account of an old-fashioned romance that got its fuse lit on the fairgrounds. If you want a straightforward 1939 World's Fair novel, the classic is still World's Fair, by E. L. Doctorow. But Gelernter writes likes nobody else. His historical research is painstaking, and his pro-1939, anti-modern political jeremiad gives the book an eccentric but propulsive narrative drive. Gelernter has a qualified love of two-fisted old-time social engineers, such as Robert Moses, and he yearns for a time when society was ruled by authority figures instead of celebrities. Ah, the good old days, when the 1939 World's Fair introduced America to TV, the fax machine, nylons, fluorescent lighting, long-distance phone calls, and an underwater Salvador Dali exhibit starring live, half-nude women. Gelernter wrote this book while recovering from a murder attempt by the Unabomber (recounted in Gelernter's Drawing Life), but his true claim to fame is the cranky individualism of his mind.

From Publishers Weekly

The 1939-40 New York World's Fair was built on a garbage dump in Flushing, Queens. Through the eyes of fictitious characters, we see the exhibits: AT&T, Ford, General Motors, DuPont, Futurama and Democracity. We review the fair's many firsts: the introduction of regular TV broadcasting, FM radio, fluorescent lighting and the fax machine. The computer?which existed in a rudimentary form?wasn't even mentioned. We are introduced to the society of the day?everyone loved big-band music, men always seemed to wear neckties and all feared the European war that had just begun. Also at the fair, "pornography was a mainstay"; the fair perhaps even invented the peep show. The author convincingly argues that the Americans of 1939 were more sophisticated than Americans are today: they were readers, and their educational systems were superior. Three names crop up repeatedly: President Franklin Roosevelt, inventor of the New Deal, which fueled the money that made New York City what it is; Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, the no-nonsense turbo known as the Little Flower; and builder Robert Moses, the man with the edifice complex that made?and some say destroyed?modern New York City. Return to a time when lunch at the Automat was 15?, the streets were safe?and remember one thing: the fair went bankrupt. Gelernter (The Muse in the Machine) has given us a portrait of yesteryear that is to be cherished. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 418 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; First Edition edition (May 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0028740025
• ISBN-13: 978-0028740027
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 6.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,148,115 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Just like being there!, July 15, 2001

By 

Kevin Spoering (Buffalo, Missouri United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: 1939: Lost World of Fair (Paperback)

I'm one of those people who has never been to New York City, though I would love to see it. This book wonderfully transports you to that city in the years of 1939-1940 and to that World's Fair. It was a time that people thought of science and technology as something that had the power to transform their lives in a positive manner, unlike the misplaced cynicism encountered today, even though we have now realized many of the dreams of that long ago fair, and many more.

David Gelernter takes you on a tour of that fair, including the various national and corporate exibits and pavilions, many were absolutely amazing, even by today's standards. Several are described in intricate detail, and being in the 1930's electro-mechanical control systems were the rule, some being very complex. Gelernter also portrays some typical hypothetical people visiting the fair and what they did. How people dressed back then, and also the underlying societal feelings, are covered, the war in Europe being on everyones mind.

This is a very well written and comprehensive account of this most famous of fairs, I immensely enjoyed it, and Gelernter covers that last few hours of the Fair with poignancy as it closed in 1940. This account makes me wish I could travel back in time and see it myself, a wistful longing not to be.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You are there at the Fair, September 9, 2005

By 

Steven W. Moje (Elkton MD) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: 1939: The Lost World of the Fair (Hardcover)

I've always been intrigued by the iconic images of the Trylon and Perisphere, from when I first saw them on a U.S Postage stamp many years ago. This book offers a way to travel back in time to live through the fair, led by the author through the eyes of fictional characters experiencing the (factual) fair. What is amazing is how the author skillfully weaves together everything to create such a compelling story. I had also bought the (100%) factual books "New York's 1939-1940 World's Fair (Postcard history series) and Dover publications' "The New York World's Fair. Both of these book offer lots of nice snapshots, but do not make the Fair come to life as does
David Gelernter"s "1939: The Lost World of the Fair." Highly recommended!

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Quirky but passionate and evocative, June 5, 2002

By 

Mike C "motomike" (Richardson, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 1939: Lost World of Fair (Paperback)

Recently I became interested in the year 1939 as a "hinge" year; so many things happened that year and it was a dividing point between the awful world of the 30s and the second World War. So I considered writing an article detailing that year, including the movies released (Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz), the events leading up the the outbreak of the war, and, of course the Fair, with the wonderful and iconic Trylon and Perisphere. Others may have covered the movies and the war, but Gelernter has covered the fair in many (not all) of the ways I wanted to hear about it. He has several theses which he presents well, whether or not you agree with him:

1. The world (or the U.S.A.) was more optimistic than we are.
2. The utopia presented in the exhibits of the fair has come about in many ways.
3. There was a sense of authority in institutions, and a measure of trust and security given to them, much of which has been lost today.
4. We are not significantly more sophisticated than the citizens of that time.
5. Men wore ties and didn't mind.

Some of his theses are more superficial than others ....

I really enjoyed this book. The author communicates a love of the fair as being not only an event in itself, but emblematic of the culture and times within which it took place. He does that in two ways: by branching off for extended meditations on the cultural differences between then and now, and by interjecting a kind of a love story as narrated by a fair-goer as she remembers going with her then-boyfriend. Quite a bit of plot regarding this love story is worked into the book, which makes the book an odd mix, as if it had taken place during the sinking of Titanic or during the Civil War.
Hmmmm....
Anyway, although this wouldn't be the stopping place for books about the fair (I was desperate for more pictures, at least), it's a wonderful starting point to find out about the year. Best of all, he treats the people and attitudes of the time seriously and doesn't let present-day cynicism interfere with his appraisal. I'm not sure I agree with all of his conclusions but I like what he says about the "American religion", manners, and cultural knowledge in general, and the chapter on "Dynamite, Manhatten, 1939" is worth reading on its own; in fact, it's almost a precis of what he is trying to say.