This was a rather bizarre mashup of storylines, and I’m not completely sure why they were. It seems like there could have been separate books, but I feel like the author/publisher wanted to capitalize on the sensationalistic aspects of Holmes to sell more books, and there just wasn’t enough material to do another whole book just on him. I did find parts of this really interesting, and at times I enjoyed the tone of the writing, but there were also sections that dragged for me. I feel like this would have benefitted from more photographs and more first person accounts of experiencing the fair itself. This has been on my TBR a long time, along with others of his books, and I’m not sure that I’m going to jump into another one any time soon.
Epilogues: || I’m sure the impact on architecture is true, but I also think a big influence of the fair was the concept that there could be a place devoted entirely to enjoyment that was permanent. That education and fun could be intertwined in the eye of the public and that money should be spent on both. That such places are a center of economic growth, including all tourism and service type businesses. It paved the way for Orlando, Florida and Anaheim, California. It cultivated the idea that Americans should/could travel for fun not just relocation and possibly invented the “Great American Road Trip” for the middle classes.
As for all of the “what happened next” for all of the various players, nothing was very surprising.