This study offers an engaging reassessment of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair (the Columbian Exposition), generally regarded as the preeminent civic pageant in Victorian America. Based on exhaustive research, Downey uses the Exposition as a representative cultural symbol to challenge established interpretations of the event and to suggest a new approach to writing American cultural history. Adopting the approach of culture as conversation, he stresses the manner in which the Chicago fair reflected the main currents and conflicting tendencies in American life at the end of the 19th...