Sub-titled 'The Interaction of Technology and Play' here is a romp through the changing landscape of 19th and 20th century American toys, games, hobbies and amusements and the ways in which technology affects play, and play shapes people. Inventors have used new materials and technologies to reshape sports and games, crafting new and extreme forms of recreation, always responding to popular demand. From LEGO, skateboards to beading kits and video games, the text is basically a social history. Some particular technologies for example the bicycle fit into more than one chapter as a toy, a hobby, a sport. There is a chapter on the American Playground Reform Movement and how they were engineered to provide wholesome and efficient activities to children of working class families. A third chapter covers commercial pleasure parks from Coney Island to Disneyland, sites where great collections and machines often imitate the technology of transportation and production through rides, shows and fanciful environments. Crafts seem to prescribe gender rules with heavy tools such as saws and hammers being reserved for men and lighter tools like sewing or knitting needles and paintbrushes reserved for women. In the 20th century new technologies presented new hobbies - operating ham radios, building model aeroplanes, assembling HiFi equipment, modifying cars, and by the end of the century cooking gourmet meals using a wide range of expensive kitchen utensils. The book looks at baseball and basketball, golf and tennis alongside the USA's elaborate road rail work, the rise of mass circulation newspapers and magazines which made national sports possible, pioneer sporting goods manufacturers, the standardisation of playing fields and equipment and through technology, high performance swimsuits and 'anchored' putters challenging the concept of the level playing field. Electronic games it seems have reproduced many of the joys and the alarm of the older toys and is discussed right from the first chapter. 200 page paperback, photos.
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