Electric Dreamland: Amusement Parks, Movies, and American Modernity (Film and Culture Series)

Meh - not quite what I wanted. Good writing; but appears to have been written for other academics with lots of opaque academic speak. I thought that most of the intellectual posturing and deconstruction/reconstruction of everyday events was pretty annoying. Honestly, people go to amusement parks to be amused.

This is a well-documented book on the origins of amusement parks, movie theaters and their common roots in the electric streetcar/interurban industry of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A bit more detail and a few more photographs would have been useful, but overall an excellent history. Long live Willow Grove Park!