Designing the Centennial is an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at the planning of America's first important world's fair -- the 1876 United States Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. The conflicts between the players -- scientists and engineers, planners and politicians, organizers and their audience -- demonstrate wider cultural clashes between a traditional view of things as object lessons and our more current understanding of things as commodities. Bruno Giberti uses the official reports of the U.S. Centennial Commission and photographs of the Centennial Photographic Company, as well as the ephemera of the exhibition and literary accounts in books, magazines, and newspapers to examine the concept of world's fairs, contrasting the 1876 event with other nineteenth- and early twentieth-century exhibitions and related institutions. The author goes beyond previous works on world's fairs by investigating the design process and by considering the nature of display -- what people were looking at and how they were looking.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1876.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1876.

In Contesting Commemoration: The 1876 Centennial, Independence Day, and the Reconstruction-Era South, Jack Noe examines identity and nationalism in the post–Civil War South through the lens of commemorative activity, namely Independence Day celebrations and the Centennial of 1876. Both events presented opportunities for whites, Blacks, northerners, and southerners to reflect on their identity as Americans. The often colorful and engaging discourse surrounding these observances provides a fascinating portrait of this fractured moment in the development of American nationalism.

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The life and times of the extraordinary Octavius Catto, and the first civil rights movement in America.

Robert W. Rydell contends that America's early world's fairs actually served to legitimate racial exploitation at home and the creation of an empire abroad. He looks in particular to the "ethnological" displays of nonwhites—set up by showmen but endorsed by prominent anthropologists—which lent scientific credibility to popular racial attitudes and helped build public support for domestic and foreign policies. Rydell's lively and thought-provoking study draws on archival records, newspaper and magazine articles, guidebooks, popular novels, and oral histories.