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| | "Fair Play" by Brian Montopoli |
 | | For its time, the fair was impossibly grand, the biggest American event since the Civil War; it would introduce Cracker Jacks, Aunt Jemima's pancake mix ("slave in a box," as its makers dubbed it), the Ferris Wheel, and a whole host of other products, as well as popularizing the new miracle of alternating current. |
 | | But the fair's greatest feat was convincing Americans that cities need not merely be filled with pragmatic structures in which form followed function; the fair's mere existence seemed to argue that the city could be beautiful. |
 | | But Holmes's presence in the book is vital, not least because, for all its focus on the fair, this is largely a work about a forgotten Chicago, a city oddly regal in its sweat and stench. |
| www.washingtonmonthly.com /features/2003/0305.montopoli.html (576 words) |
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