GOING OUT

Another sparkling urban cultural history from Nasaw (History/The College of Staten Island; Children of the City, 1985, etc.), chronicling the great entertainment arenas—movie palaces, amusement parks, World Fairs, ballparks, etc.—of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which, he says, helped to heat and stir the American melting pot. In the early 1800's, Nasaw contends, urbanites ``were segregated from one another at work and at home, by income, ethnicity, gender, and social class.'' But with the population explosion fostered by immigration, the increase in available income and leisure time, as well as technological innovations—especially the harnessing of electricity—entrepreneurs began creating venues for the middle- and working-classes, beginning with vaudeville theaters. But excluded, or at least segregated, from vaudeville performances—except as self-parodic performers (playing the ``imbecile,'' the ``dandy,'' the ``lazy fool,'' or, later, ``the razor-wielding coon'')—were African-Americans. This exception to the democratic mingling of socially diverse urban audiences served a specific purpose, argues Nasaw in a recurrent theme: to ``mute'' the social distinctions between ``decent'' audience members by elevating them above ``indecent'' blacks. For most Americans, though, it was an age of wonders: an 11-acre re-creation of Jerusalem at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair; Coney Island's Luna Park, with its 250,000 light bulbs; Lowe's ``transcendently glorious'' Midland movie palace in Kansas City, Missouri (the movies' grip on public entertainment forms the somewhat familiar core of the latter half of Nasaw's study). It was only after WW II that the great wave of public amusements waned—a casualty, the author points out, not only of TV but also of suburbanization and the growing fear of urban violence. Elegant, well-researched Americana, highlighting both the sweet excitement of a golden age and the bitter racism that helped it thrive. (Illustrations—not seen)