Ephemeral City

A People's History of Chicago's Century of Progress World's Fair

Lindsay Fullerton

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9780252088520, 9780252046438
• eBook ISBN: 9780252047749
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Less celebrated than the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, the 1933–1934 Century of Progress Exposition brought visitors face-to-face with gleaming American consumerism in the midst of the Great Depression. Lindsay Fullerton draws on a wealth of personal photographs, scrapbooks, oral histories, and writings to illuminate the wildly different experiences of fairgoers against the backdrop of a city steeped in poverty and segregation.

The Exposition took place amidst massive changes sparked by expansion of mass media, Franklin Roosevelt's election, the repeal of Prohibition, and the Great Migration. A diverse cross-section of Chicagoans informs Fullerton's history of the event in the context of the fast-changing America of the interwar era. These personal accounts tell stories of how attendees interpreted their own experiences while being surrounded by whiz-bang products and full-throated evangelism on the benefits of progress.

A colorful people's history, Ephemeral City takes readers inside the other Chicago World's Fair and how visitors interacted with a pivotal moment in American history.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 A Century in the Making
• 2 A Century of Chicago
• 3 A Century of Money
• 4 A Century of Science and Technology
• 5 A New Century
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover