Review by Choice Review
The expansion in scope of Giberti's dissertation never became wide enough, and the title of his book is misleading. There is nothing here about the role of the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876 in the country's centennial celebration, which is a pity. Instead, the title should be "Michel Foucault Visits the Centennial Exhibition" because the book focuses very narrowly on the manner of organizing and displaying the things exhibited there, using modernist French historiography as the lens. The comments about the fair's buildings and the event's place among the other international exhibitions of the era are illuminating, but the last chapter, which purports to show the influence of the exhibition on the development of museums and departments stores, is so narrowly focused on Philadelphia and so thinly documented that it becomes misleading, even about developments in Philadelphia. Otherwise, the writing and the documentation are well done, and the illustrations are properly chosen, although their reproduction is too small even in their second appearance in the appendix. Extensive notes. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. C. W. Westfall University of Notre Dame
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
