Books, Arts & Manners: Greatness in Flushing Meadows

1939: The Lost World of the Fair, by David Gelernter (Free Press, 418 pp., $23)

IF YOU frequent large and miscellaneous antique shows, you learn all sorts of things from old memorabilia. Some are surprising, such as that Bill McKinley was the most beloved of all American Presidents. Other things are not so surprising, such as that the New York World’s Fair of 1939-40, at Flushing Meadows, was probably the most brilliant fair of all time, including the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park in 1851. I went to it almost every day, and I don’t need the memorabilia to tell me how important it was.

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Jeffrey Hart

Jeffrey Hart is a contributor to National Review.

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1939: The Lost World of the Fair, by David Gelernter (Free Press, 418 pp., $23)

IF YOU frequent large and miscellaneous antique shows, you learn all sorts of things from old memorabilia. Some are surprising, such as that Bill McKinley was the most beloved of all American Presidents. Other things are not so surprising, such as that the New York World’s Fair of 1939-40, at Flushing Meadows, was probably the most brilliant fair of all time, including the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park in 1851. I went to it almost every day, and I don’t need the memorabilia to tell me how important it was.