In this prequel to Fantasy City: Pleasure and Profit in the Postmodern Metropolis (1998), his acclaimed book about the post-industrial city as a site of theming, branding and simulated spaces, sociologist John Hannigan travels back in time to the 1950s. Unfairly stereotyped as ‘the tranquillized decade’, America at mid-century hosted an escalating proliferation and conjunction of ‘spectacular’ events, spaces, and technologies. Spectacularization was collectively defined by five features. It reflected and legitimated a dramatic increase in scale from the local/regional to the national. It was mediated by the increasingly popular medium of television. It exploited middle-class tension between comfortable conformity and desire for safe adventure. It celebrated technological progress, boosterism and military power. It was orchestrated and marketed by a constellation, sometimes a coalition, of entrepreneurs and dream merchants, most prominently Walt Disney. In this wide-ranging odyssey across mid-century America, Hannigan visits leisure parks (Cypress Gardens), parades (Tournament of Roses), mega-events (Squaw Valley Olympics, Century 21 Exposition), architectural styles (desert modernism), innovations (underwater photography, circular film projection) and everyday wonders (chemistry sets). Collectively, these fashioned the ‘spectacular gaze’, a prism through which Americans in the 1950s were acculturated to and conscripted into a vision of a progressive, technology-based future. Rise of the Spectacular will appeal to architects, landscape designers, geographers, sociologists, historians, and leisure/tourism researchers, as well as non-academic readers who are by a fascinating era in history.

The GAO review "was concerned primarily with the administration of permits for use of national forest lands for summer-home sites and for commercial activities related to recreation" (i.e. concessionaires). -- p. 1.

Established in 1905, The Forest Service is steeped in history, conflict, strong personalities (including Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot), and the challenges of managing 193 million acres of national forests and grasslands. This unique federal agency is one that combines forest management with wildlife, fish, recreation, mining, grazing, and hundreds of other uses. It operates in the midst of controversy and change. The original intent was to protect the public forests, protect the water supplies, and, when appropriate, provide timber. Much has changed over the last 100 years including many new laws, but the fact that these lands are still fought over today shows the foresight of politicians, foresters, scientists, and communities. This work brings to light the many and varied activities of the agency that many people know little about in a world that is constantly changing. Written by a former Forest Service national historian, topics discussed in the work include wilderness and the Wilderness Act of 1964, recreation battles and interagency rivalry with the National Park Service, timber management including clearcutting, ecosystem management, roadless area and controversies over RARE and RARE II studies, fish and wildlife management including endangered species before and after the Endangered Species Act of 1973, and mining and the General Mining Act of 1872. It also discusses the future challenges: forest fires, water protection and restoration, recreation, involving the public, and fish and wildlife.