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Carnival in the Countryside - The History of the Iowa State Fair (Paperback)
Loot Price: R493
Discovery Miles 4 930
You Save: R157
(24%)
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Carnival in the Countryside - The History of the Iowa State Fair (Paperback)
Series: Iowa and the Midwest Experience
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List price R650
Loot Price R493
Discovery Miles 4 930
You Save R157 (24%)
Supplier out of stock. If you add this item to your wish list we will let you know when it becomes available.
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More than a century and a half after its founding, the Iowa State
Fair is the state's central institution, event, and symbol. New
Jersey has the Shore; Kentucky has the Derby; Iowa has the Fair.
The humble Iowa State Fairground ranks alongside the Great
Pyramidsat Giza and the Taj Mahal in the bestselling travel guide
1,000 Places to See Before You Die. During its annual run each
August, the fair attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors who
make the pilgrimage to the fairground to see the iconic butter cow,
to ride the Old Mill, to walk through the livestock barns, and to
peoplewatch. At the sametime that they enjoy fried candy bars and
roller coasters, Iowans also compete to raise the best corn and
zucchinis, to make the best jams and jellies, to rear the finest
sheep and goats, the largest cattle and hogs, and the handsomest
horses. This tension between entertainment and agriculture goes
back all the way to the fair's founding in the mid1800s, as
historian Chris Rasmussen shows in this thoughtprovoking history.
The fair's founders had lofty aims: they sought to improve
agricultureand foster a distinctively democratic American
civilization. But from the start these noble intentions jostled up
against people's desire to have fun and make money, honestly or
otherwise-not least because the fair had to pay for itself. In
their effort to upliftrural life without going broke, the
organizers of the Iowa State Fair debated the respectability of
horse racing and gambling and struggled to find qualified livestock
judges. Worried about the economic forces undermining rural
families, they ran competitions to select the best babies and the
"ideal" rural girl and boy while luringspectators with massive
panoramas of earthquakes and fires, not to mention staged
trainwrecks. In short, the Iowa State Fair has as much to tell us
about human nature and American history as it does about growing
corn.
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