Looking Back at the Future: Photographing Vintage Leftovers of New York’s World’s Fairs

Book Reviews

Looking Back at the Future: Photographing Vintage Leftovers of New York’s World’s Fairs“Looking Back at the Future: Photographing Vintage Leftovers of New York’s World’s Fairs
By Gloria R. Nash
New York: NRG Press, 2024
Softcover, 123 pages, $29.95

Reviewed by Douglas C. Towne

With the stars of the 1939 Fair, such as General Motors’ “Futurama” exhibit and Trylon and Perisphere, the oversized obelisk and globe practically in my DNA, it was with great interest that I read SCA member Gloria R. Nash’s recent book documenting the remnants of the 1939 and 1964- 65 New York World’s Fairs.

Nash, too, carries the World’s Fair DNA from her childhood, as she watched in awe the light shows and fireworks from the 1964-65 Fair from her family’s apartment in Queens. She was also a frequent fair visitor. “Even at ages 10 and 11, I sensed the fair would be among the highlights of my life,” Nash writes. “More than a group of buildings, they represented an energy that defined the pinnacle of the era’s creativity in architecture, art, design, engineering, industry, and technology.

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Bowlarama: The Architecture of Mid-Century Bowling

Book Reviews

Bowlarama BookBowlarama: The Architecture of Mid-Century Bowling
By Chris Nichols with Adriene Biondo
Angel City Press, 2024
Hardcover, 176 pages, $40

Reviewed by Ronald Ladouceur

[See: SCA Zoom Recording by Bowlarama’s co-author, Chris Nichols]

A chatty and charming companion to Thomas Hine’s Populuxe (1986) and Alan Hess’s Googie: Fifties Coffee Shop Architecture (1986). Bowlarama, a handsome, fact-filled book chronicles the entire history of bowling, but focuses the half-decade between 1957 and 1962, when separate streams of technology, suburbanization, and entertainment culture combined to fuel the development of fantastic and monumental architectural confections throughout the west and across the country.

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Vintage Georgia Signs and Lost Attractions of Georgia

Book Reviews

Vintage Georgia Signs
By Tim Hollis
Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2024
Softcover, 160, 26.99

Lost Attractions of Georgia
By Tim Hollis
Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2021
Softcover, 144, 23.99

Reviewed by Peter Glaser

With a staggering 40 books under his belt, Birmingham native Tim Hollis is a veritable publishing industry. Having written on a diverse range of subjects, his focus is generally divided between pop culture history and explorations of Southeastern regional tourism. Hollis first caught my attention with the publication of his second book, the fantastic Dixie Before Disney: 100 Years of Roadside Fun (University Press of Mississippi, 1999). In it, he celebrates Southern “home-grown theme parks and whimsical roadside showplaces” before the arrival of Orlando’s Disney World in 1971. Since its publication, he has written several books in the roadside realm exploring Florida springs, Rock City, Stuckey’s, theme parks, and Birmingham department stores.

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