Twilight at the World of Tomorrow: Genius, Madness, Murder, and the 1939 World's Fair on the Brink of War

Good Historical Information but Falls Short of Erik Larson's Classic

This book was billed as the next Devil in the White City. It does have a lot of interesting historical information about the development of Flushing Meadows Park in New York that would generally interest a New Yorker. However, a lot of that information would probably bore anyone not from the area.

While Erik Larson had a magical way of describing how a miracle of building was pulled off to develop the Chicago Fair and having a compelling tale of one of the first US serial killers, this book is more akin to a history textbook. The writer of this book seems to lack the flair of turning history into a compelling tale.

The book's main suspense is around a bomb that was accidentally detonated which in itself is as interesting as a passing news story. The author does hint at some of the injustice done to Einstein when he tried to return to the United States but even that was just a short chapter of the book. Robert Moses is always an interesting personality and the portions that included his wheeling and dealing as the Corona dumps are transformed to a workable solution to having a fairgrounds is another part of the book that provides some interest.

The author did not describe the fair itself with the excitement that it could have had. Having been to the 1964 World's Fair at the same site, there was not a lot of differences between the two fairs even though they were 25 years apart.