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Article: Today Then: America's Best Minds Look 100 Years into the Future on the Occasion of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. (book reviews)
- Article from:
- Insight on the News
- Article date:
- March 29, 1993
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1993 News World Communications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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For the 1893 Chicago world's fair, the American Press Association asked 74 commentators to predict what life would be like 100 years into the future. The result was a wide range of essays that were published as a prelude to the festivities in Chicago. These prognostications have been collected by Dave Walter in Today Then (American & World Geographic), an entertaining look back at the way Americans looked forward a century ago.
Not the least bemusing aspect of these essays is the way in which virtually all the commentators shared an optimistic view of the way modernism would affect the future. Sometimes startingly prescient, sometimes charmingly off the mark, ...