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(More customer reviews)Fred Thompson was the "kid" (he was in his early twenties when he built Luna Park in Coney Island) who first recognized that the American middle class in the early 20th century was ripe for amusement and fun, ready to embrace consumption, fun and leisure as a moral system. Here he is given his due as a great innovator (inventor of the theme park), and a great showman (Broadway producer of mega-extravaganzas). Woody Register's highly readable and extremely insightful book is not just about Fred Thompson (of which there is very little historical information other than press releases, scattered interviews and new stories about Thompson's endeavors and stunts), but is all about the break between the early industrial age (all about saving and putting aside wages for a rainy day, Victorian respectability, the patriarchal society and responsibility) and the dawning of the modern age of consumption (spending for the fun of it, disrepectable activities, the newly feminized office-based white collar man and irresponsiblity). Thompson was the first entreprenuer to sell the idea of childhood as a lifelong event sustained through the agency of the carnival, the theme park, the toy. His genius lay in combining the new conception of childhood as a time of "innocent joy" with the new era of comsumption for consumption's sake. A wild spender, he died penniless, still enthusiastic, still working on his next big project, a perfect exemplar of the new boy/man Peter Pan personality he was instrumental in creating. According to Mr. Register's Introduction, this work took him much longer to write than he expected it would. We are the beneficiaries of his extended and meticulous labors -- this book is sure to beome a classic cultural studies text.
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