Yesterday's Tomorrows: Past Visions of the American Future Review

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(More customer reviews)"Yesterday's Tomorrows" is a look at how both popular culture and leading scientists, from the 1800s to the 1970s viewed the future. Joseph Corn and Brian Horrigan, using a variety of source materials, present these visions, both optimistic and grim, in a manner that avoids derision or arrogance. After all, some of these came true, and, in some cases, we wish the others had come true. But, as Corn and Horrigan point out, that's the beauty of the future: anything is still possible. The best way to explore how others viewed the future is through pictures, and this book has plenty. Corn and Horrigan draw on pictures, sketches and illustrations from magazines, TV shows, movies and books. While many of these visions, such as Buck Rogers' ray gun or a helicopter in every garage, are now nostalgic, many others, such as Buckminister Fuller's houses, still invoke wonder and awe. Corn and Horrigan provide a balanced approach to their theme by drawing from both popular culture and the scientific community's conception of what our life would be like. The book runs the gamut from future visions of cities, housing, transportation and warfare. Some ideas such as lasers have become commonplace while others like the flying tanks are prototypes that were passed over in favor of more practical options. But as the authors point out, who are we to judge these ideas from the vantage point of our time? Corn and Horrigan are careful not to poke fun at these concepts, but instead present them and explain their significance to the context of the times which produced them. Both fun and thought-provoking, this book is an excellent glimpse into not only the future, but into our dreams that make our tomorrows. Highly recommended.

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Enormous skyscrapers will house residents and workers who happily go "for weeks" without setting foot on the ground. Streamlined, "hurricane-proof" houses will pivot on their foundations like weather vanes. The family car will turn into an airplane so easily that "a woman can do it in five minutes." Our wars will be fought by robots. And our living room furniture-waterproof, of course-will clean up with a squirt from the garden hose. InYesterday's Tomorrows Joseph J. Corn and Brian Horrigan explore the future as Americans earlier in the last century expected it to happen. Filled with vivid color images and lively text, the book is eloquent testimony to the confidence-and, at times, the naive faith-Americans have had in science and technology. The future that emerges here, the authors conclude, is one in which technology changes, but society and politics usually do not.The authors draw on a wide variety of sources-popular-science magazines, science fiction, world fair exhibits, films, advertisements, and plans for things only dreamed of. From Jules Verne to the Jetsons, from a 500-passenger flying wing to an anti-aircraft flying buzz-saw, the vision of the future as seen through the eyes of the past demonstrates the play of the American imagination on the canvas of the future.

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