History of the Iowa State Fair
The University of Iowa Press is proud to present our newest Iowa and the Midwest Experience series title, Carnival in the Countryside: The History of the Iowa State Fair, by Chris Rasmussen.
Praise for Carnival in the Countryside
"Chris Rasmussen's Carnival in the Countryside offers a fascinating saga of one of the most heralded midwestern institutions of our day: the Iowa State Fair and its famous butter cow. Beyond Hollywood's image of a young Pat Boone playing a strapping country boy adrift in Des Moines, beyond a nineteenth-century history that invites nostalgia for the family farm, the author puts the fair at the center of a critical debate over rural values versus urban ones, scandalous entertainments versus learning and enterprise, and the future of an Iowa that has managed to churn its disagreements into a proud independence of mind and spirit."--Karal Ann Marling,Blue Ribbon: A Social and Pictorial History of the Minnesota State Fair
