Flying Cars, Zombie Dogs, and Robot Overlords

  ROCHESTER, MN - 12/12/2017 (PRESS RELEASE JET)

Every time you plug your phone into a wall socket, flick on a TV, withdraw money from an ATM, lick an ice-cream cone, chug a PBR, shop for organic foods, switch on a computer, ride an escalator, play a DVR, watch a movie about dinosaurs, get fingerprinted, or pop a tranquilizer, you’re doing something that hit a tipping point at a world’s fair or trade expo.

That’s the theme of Charles Pappas’ new book, Flying Cars, Zombie Dogs, and Robot Overlords, published by Lyons Press. The offbeat history explores how each new technology and every novel product that rocked America and rolled the world, from the Colt revolver and the Corvette to fax machines and flush toilets, started. At world expos, trade shows, and state fairs.

Pappas, a senior writer at Exhibitor magazine, began researching the history of what he calls "the invisible world of fairs" of fairs 15 years ago. What he found astonished him: The crucial ideas that added to or subtracted from human happiness -nudism to Nazism, pure foods to eugenics - hit their tipping point at these fairs as well. “Whether it’s X-rays at the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition in 1898, the Ferris wheel and Aunt Jemima Pancakes at the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, or the VCR at the International Consumer Electronics show in 1970, world expos and trade shows are where the future goes to be seen.”

Flying Cars, Zombie Dogs, and Robot Overlords is now available in bookstores and on Amazon.