MACMILLAN Fleeting Cities: Imperial Expositions in Fin-de-Siècle Europe

Imperial expositions held in fin-de-siècle London, Paris and Berlin were knots in a world wide web. Conceptualizing expositions as meta-media, Fleeting Cities constitutes a transnational and transdisciplinary investigation into how modernity was created and displayed, consumed and disputed in the European metropolis around 1900. Review “This book is a stunning achievement. … The whole volume is full of insights, as the reader is taught how to read an exposition, as existing chronologies (not least the belief that exhibitions declined in popularity) are challenged and overturned, and as Geppert offers new ways of conceptualising the whole process, uncovering transnational links and exploring these places as sites for an urban modernity in ways that other authors have hitherto scarcely touched on.” (William Whyte, English Historical Review, February, 2016) "Geppert not only invites us to look beyond exhibitions as vessels of imperial propaganda, but also adds depth to our understanding of them with his theorised account on the spatial element of world exhibitions.” (Matthijs Kuipers, European Review of History, Vol. 22 (6), August, 2015) Review Shortlisted for the Longman - History Today Book Prize 2010 "If I were to recommend only one book about nineteenth- and early twentieth-century international expositions, it would be this one. Geppert's writing is clear, his learning is massive but never in the way, and his subject the spaces and places of world's fairs becomes in his hands a way of thinking about the self-reflexive and self-referential qualities of modernity. Fleeting Cities is an exemplary cultural and institutional history of one of the most talked about, glitzy new media phenomena of their age." - Thomas W. Laqueur, University of California, Berkeley, USA "Fleeting Cities vividly and authoritatively demonstrates how European exhibitions formed an integral part of the material and mental urban environment which they helped to shape. It is a model of transnational, comparative history, attentive to the architectural grammar, social imaginaries, and political histories of these urban installations." - Judith R. Walkowitz, Johns Hopkins University, USA "A careful reading of the complex history of international exhibitions. As a social theorist, the author presents a brilliant analysis of the writings of Georg Simmel, the German cultural philosopher, on exhibitions, as well as his confrontation with Wilhelm II on the subject of exhibitions and the German cultural and national ideology." - Aram A.Yengoyan, University of California, Davis, USA "Geppert has succeeded in writing five worthwhile, brilliant essays on five 'late' major exhibitions held in the European metropoles, all based on a commanding knowledge of his sources and the (by now rampant) secondary literature." - Daniel Mollenhauer, Sehepunkte "This is an important and ambitious study which will serve as a valuable resource of reference for future students of the subject. It is extremely well illustrated and supported with plenty of useful graphs, appendices, and an extensive bibliography." - Jill Steward, H-Net Reviews "A successful Gesamtkunstwerk and a pleasure to read." - Klaus Dittrich, Comparativ "Geppert has elegantly fathomed and brought new perspectives to the subject of international exhibitions. He has succeeded in producing an enormously stimulating contribution to a transnational history of modernity in the age of metropoles." - Martin Baumeister, Historische Zeitschrift "Can an author move forward the theoretical discussion? In the case of Alexander C. T. Geppert's Fleeting Cities, the answer to those queries is yes. This book breaks new ground . . . Geppert throws down the scholarly gauntlet on his book's first page . . . Geppert's work will . . . attract those captivated by how we study exhibitions and modernity and by the modern history of Europe's 'great' cities specifically, Berlin, Paris, an