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The Kid of Coney Island: Fred Thompson and the Rise of American Amusements

The Kid of Coney Island: Fred Thompson and the Rise of American Amusements

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The Kid of Coney Island: Fred Thompson and the Rise of American Amusements

by Register, Woody

  • Used
  • Very Good
  • Hardcover
  • first
Condition
Very Good/very good
ISBN 10
0195144937
ISBN 13
9780195144932
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Carrollton, Georgia, United States
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About This Item

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good/very good. First Edition. Hardcover. First Edition with full number line indicating first printing. 9 1/2" X 6 1/2". xi, 400pp. Very mild shelf wear to covers, corners, and edges of unclipped dust jacket. White paper over boards with spine backed in orange and lettered in metallic red. Pages are clean and unmarked. Binding is firm and sound.

ABOUT THIS BOOK:
A generation before Walt Disney, Fred Thompson was the "boy-wonder" of American popular amusements. At the turn of the 20th century, Thompson's entrepreneurial drive made him into an entertainment mogul who helped to define the popular culture of his day. In this lively biography, cultural historian Woody Register tells the remarkable story of Thompson and examines the transformation of commerce and entertainment as American society moved into an era of mass marketing and large-scale corporate enterprise.
Register shows how Thompson got his start as a creator and promoter of carnival shows and world's fairs, including the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, and he traces Thompson's career as one of the principal developers and promoters of Coney Island (where he built Luna Park) and other amusement parks. Thompson built the mammoth Hippodrome Theater in Manhattan and mounted many productions there and on Broadway, noted for their spectacular (and spectacularly costly) staging effects. Thompson aggressively marketed to adult consumers a world of make-believe and childlike play, crafting his own public image as "the boy who never grew up." Register shows how strongly Thompson's fantasies appealed to the growing legions of men and women who found themselves in a world that seemed increasingly "businesslike," profit-oriented, and regimented.
Colorful, well written, and insightful, The Kid of Coney Island brings to life a kaleidoscopic era in New York history as well as one of its most striking characters.(Publisher).

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Details

Bookseller
Underground Books, ABAA US (US)
Bookseller's Inventory #
7166
Title
The Kid of Coney Island: Fred Thompson and the Rise of American Amusements
Author
Register, Woody
Format/Binding
Hardcover
Book Condition
Used - Very Good
Jacket Condition
very good
Quantity Available
1
Edition
First Edition
ISBN 10
0195144937
ISBN 13
9780195144932
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Place of Publication
Oxford
Date Published
2001

Terms of Sale

Underground Books, ABAA

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About the Seller

Underground Books, ABAA

Seller rating:
This seller has earned a 5 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.
Biblio member since 2009
Carrollton, Georgia

About Underground Books, ABAA

Underground Books is an online rare and antiquarian bookshop as well as a brick and mortar general bookstore of the same name in downtown Carrollton, Georgia. Sister store Hills & Hamlets Bookshop is located in the nearby planned eco-community of Serenbe.

Co-owners Josh Niesse and Megan Bell met in 2011, just 10 days or so after Josh opened the doors of Underground Books, literally underground, several steps below street level in a 100-year-old basement in our historic downtown. Megan, an English student at the University of West Georgia, walked in, fell down the rabbit hole, and never left! Reader, we married in May of 2014, under the book arch that now resides at the bookshop. We are both proud alumni of the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar (CABS), and Megan additionally of Rare Book School at the University of Virginia and of the ABAA Women's Initiative Mentorship Program.

We have two open bookshops that carry new, used, bargain, rare, and antiquarian books, as well as our online office, impossible without our incredible team of booksellers, including two fellow CABS graduates, Miranda McMillan and Suzanne Carnes.

Like many booksellers with open brick-and-mortar stores, we are passionate generalists, but our specialties are in decorative publisher's cloth bindings; fairy tales, folklore, and mythology; popular science and natural history; the occult; and fine press books.

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New
A new book is a book previously not circulated to a buyer. Although a new book is typically free of any faults or defects, "new"...
Spine
The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
Shelf Wear
Shelf wear (shelfwear) describes damage caused over time to a book by placing and removing a book from a shelf. This damage is...
Number Line
A series of numbers appearing on the copyright page of a book, where the lowest number generally indicates the printing of that...
Edges
The collective of the top, fore and bottom edges of the text block of the book, being that part of the edges of the pages of a...
First Edition
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Jacket
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