A superbly researched, structured, and written treatise on how two behemoth 20th-century trends converged.
Automation at amusement parks isn’t just about efficiency, argues Betancourt in this nonfiction work.
Maybe you learned about automation from the novel Cheaper by the Dozen (1948), in which Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey detailed their father’s obsession with making every process, including morning tooth-brushing, faster and more glitch-free. (Frank Gilbreth does figure in this new history of automation and Disneyfication.) You definitely have learned about automation if you’ve ever visited a theme park, particularly Disneyland. Art historian Betancourt discusses the ways in which this technology has helped to create “the happiest place on Earth,” but his thesis goes much deeper and is far more compelling: He posits that as Walt Disney leveraged the ideas, techniques, and equipment used by such automation innovators as Henry Ford, John T. Diebold (“Mr. Automation”), and Robert W. Gilman, theme park visitors themselves became the “products” of the automation process. People who had been through rides like the Matterhorn Bobsleds and Space Mountain were, in effect, emerging as more delighted, happier versions of themselves—and these experiences relied in some way on the mechanics of automation (assembly lines, tracking devices, interlockingness). Although most of this quite dense (though clearly written) text focuses on the history of Disney and 20th-century automation practices, the author also comments on the ways in which robotics and AI are changing theme park attractions: “Now, it is the factory machine that becomes the Disney character, rather than the other way around,” concluding, “the valley dividing labor and leisure has come close to being fully eroded.” He passes no judgment on these changes, instead reminding readers that we’re all embedded in “this new reality.” Betancourt’s text, supplemented by a plethora of archival photographs, charts, and other images, is sure to be an important contribution to future discussions of humans versus machines.
A superbly researched, structured, and written treatise on how two behemoth 20th-century trends converged.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9780691255873
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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