Twilight
at the World of Tomorrow: Genius, Madness, Murder at the 1939 World’s Fair on
the Brink of War by James Mauro 432 pages
Well, this book turned out to be a
bust. It had a couple of highlights, but very few. From the title and dust jacket art, I thought
this would be similar to Erik Larson’s “Devil in the White City.”
On one hand it was. Lots of details
about the building and execution of the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. One of
the more interesting details that I learned was about its location. Out in
Flushing Meadow in the Queens Borough, there was a trash dump. The men behind
the fair had it filled in and it became the fairgrounds.
I had hoped to get a glimpse of the
genius (considering Albert Einstein is on the cover), and I guess there was
some of that…how the technology worked. The Madness stemmed from its president,
Grover Whalen, who seemed just a tad OCD. As for the murder, during the second
half of the fair, there was a problem with bombings. However, none of how the
bombs were found, the destruction they caused or those who lost their lives
even began until page 290.
Twilight
at the World of Tomorrow gets 1 out of 5
stars in Julie’s world.
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